


a million filaments

by maleficently



Series: the fatal plunge [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-29 20:19:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maleficently/pseuds/maleficently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If she squints enough, displacing the sheen of wetness in front of her eyes that she rejects so very thoroughly, she can almost see the outlines of the photographs that lined the wall.  <em>Poof</em>.  A family won, a family lost.</p><p>[Part 3 of a 3-part post-curse AU that mostly ignores Season 2 developments; see the notes for details.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers:
> 
> 1) This 1000% ignores "Manhattan" and the whole Baelfire reveal, because I'm not interested in the idea that it was Emma's DESTINY to get knocked up and abandoned by the much-older and incredibly cowardly son of that asshole who is ultimately responsible for her godawful life, especially not if the show is going to try to sell any of that as being "romantic" or whatever. I'm also not here for everyone other than Regina being biologically related to Henry, and I'm especially not here for Emma being more traumatized by seeing her ex-boyfriend again than by, idk, finding out her parents are 30 year old fairy tale characters who put her in a tree when she was a baby. I mean, gosh, I really enjoyed Jennifer Morrison's acting this week, but beyond that, no thanks.
> 
> 2) Actually, this is now so far removed from the show that you really ought to read parts 1 and 2 first. 
> 
> 3) Hook is both more competent and less gross here than he is on the show; mea culpa, I didn't realize they'd turn him into the misogynist Wile E Coyote of Fairy Tale Land when he was first introduced.
> 
> 4) This is still in progress so as we go along, minor changes to what's already been posted _may_ be necessary, but I promise they will be minor. I just wanted to get going on posting the story while I still remember why I really love Regina and Emma and why I once liked Snow and Charming and why I once thought this show would tell a fairly feminist, female-focused story about unconventional families, or something. 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking around and being excited about this still (I hope!)--and as always, my endless gratitude to the Fab Four for making sure the end product is both legible and enjoyable.

… 

a million filaments

the fatal plunge: part three

…

_In which the savior saves herself, and the queen abdicates._

… 

 _What a trash_  
 _To annihilate each decade._  
  
 _What a million filaments._  
Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"

... 

 _It feels like time ain't time at all_  
 _Just black out, wake up foreign, wander home_  
Matthew Good, "Last Parade"

...

 _In the middle of the world on a fish hook_  
 _You're the wave_  
Bush, "Swallowed"


	2. Chapter 2

_now_

…

The fire doesn’t so much roar as simmer, as if the cold pervading the entirety of the house is sapping it from any strength it might build.  If the walls are closing in on it the way they are on her, Regina can hardly blame it.  All that remains is for her to wrap herself tightly in a blanket that she can imagine smelling of Emma; a blanket stashed away in the linen closet upstairs, but one that had been folded sloppily over the edge of the sofa for months. 

Emma had donned it as a cape most nights; a Supergirl.  What remains of her now is broken, crashed back down to earth after a fight with whoever it is Supergirl fights.  Aliens, presumably.  Perhaps those Asgardians that Henry knows so much about.

It costs her--in physical pain, in mental focus she doesn’t have, in time--to build the fire higher again, and even then, the heat doesn’t permeate any particular part of her.  The house is an empty canvas once more; as empty as she had let it remain, decorating only to build an appearance of luxury and _home_ , but prior to their second dalliance with life-altering magic, the only room in the house that had had any character at all had been Henry’s. 

If she squints enough, displacing the sheen of wetness in front of her eyes that she rejects so very thoroughly, she can almost see the outlines of the photographs that lined the wall.  _Poof_.  A family won, a family lost.

She has no appetite for cider and cannot bear to drink scotch any longer, and so she sits in front of the fire and looks out at the apple tree, blooming, thickening, ripening.  It’s the end of summer and her tree will bear fruit someday soon, and she can see a future in which she and Henry will take a basket outside and fill it to the brim with apples that none other than her dare to eat anymore.  She wonders if he’ll dare ask what the point is.

It’s the end of summer, and she’s as cold as though it is the shortest day of the year, fire or no fire. 

This is what it feels like to be lonely, she thinks, and she knows that she cannot bear it any longer.

…

Henry finds her at six in the morning; she can hear the scuffle of his socked feet on the tiles, coming towards her tentatively and then heading towards the kitchen.  She can’t recall if he knew how to make coffee before, in any world; but he’s figured it out, and on the days where she remains--skeletal, weak--downstairs overnight, she knows that it will take him at most ten minutes and one precarious climb onto a kitchen chair to get the sugar.  Every day, he makes her coffee with four teaspoons of sugar, and every day she declines telling him that that’s the way Emma likes it.

The sweetness stings her mouth, but even then she needs it, and when he sits down on the footstool in front of her and hands over the mug, with solemn, worried eyes, she wraps her hands around the mug and lets that little blast of heat propel her into further movement.

“Did you sleep well?” he asks her, far too seriously for his age.

“I should be asking you that, sweetheart,” she tells him, and his smile grows.  She can see shadows under his eyes, too; too many late nights drawing up plans and ideas, scanning through every least-interesting page of the storybook to see where the happy endings are hiding.  There is a notebook under his bed titled _Operation Blondie_.  Once, she would have read it cover to cover, just to feel as though she actually  knew her own son, but the need for that has evaporated altogether. 

She knows him as he knows her; and he knows her and he’s still here.

“I slept okay,” he says, ends of his hair sticking out in all directions, and she takes a single sip of the too-sweet coffee and then reaches out for him, running hands that feel gnarled--as they would be, had she aged normally--through his hair.  “I only had one bad dream, last night.”

She manages a whisper of a smile and then leans back in the chair, cupping the coffee to her chest.  “You should have come down.  I would’ve made you hot chocolate.”

“It wasn’t really a bad dream, it was just--” Henry starts to say, before sighing and picking at some lint on his pajama pants.

“I understand,” she says, wondering how much time will pass before a statement that plain will stop feeling like a knife, gutting her from the navel upwards. 

Henry gnaws on his lip for a few seconds, before peering up at her cautiously.  “Do you think this is going to work?”

“Oh, Henry,” she says, closing her eyes briefly.  She wants to say more; about how she’s been counting on him to believe enough for both of them, the way he’s always believed--but perhaps that time is gone forever.  She will not be the first to say it out loud; it will make it real in a way that nothing truly feels, not now.

“It’s not like it was when I had the book; when I knew stuff other people didn’t,” he says, quietly.  “Gramps always says... um, that you just need to--”

He falls silent, and after a second she asks, “Have faith?”

“Yeah,” he says, flicking lint away and then looking at her and sighing.  “I know true love is the most powerful magic of all; that it’s supposed to be able to do anything, but... I also know that it _can’t_ do everything.”

Sometimes, it startles her how much her son sounds like the man she buried so long ago, but it’s there all the same; as if values that she held tightly to her own heart trickled out into Henry no matter how much she denied their existence, or perhaps as if good simply always shines out in the same way.

“This is not beyond its powers, Henry,” she finally says, and brings the coffee back to her lips, nose twitching at how cloying the coffee smells.  “If it was, I would never--”

“What if she says no?”

If she could explain to him what it felt like, to get no say in one’s position in life, to get no say in something this overwhelmingly important, she would; but she’s seen it from both sides, and even with that knowledge it’s impossible to reconcile how much she’d hated a done deal with Leopold and how much comfort she gets from the certainty of her feelings now.

Once, Emma had shuffled up a red-carpeted aisle, past her friends and colleagues and mother and father and son, and had come to a halt next to her, reaching for a crumpled piece of paper that she’d tucked into her dress between her breasts, only to let it slip to the floor and then stare at Regina haplessly.

Emma’s fingers had shaken around a plain, perfect ring, and the corner of her mouth had turned upward and she’d croaked out an utterly sincere, “You’re pretty much it for me, you know?”

Their friends had laughed, but Regina had only found that out a few days later, when Kathryn had pulled her aside and handed her a ribbon-wrapped copy of a DVD that contained the whole ceremony.  In the moment, she’d barely even heard the words, because everything she’d needed to know was in Emma’s eyes.

It feels like a different life, and not simply because it was one.

“One thing at a time,” she finally says, and Henry lifts up from the footstool and wraps clumsy, quickly lengthening arms around her.

“Okay,” he exhales, and she thinks of a time when this was all she thought she needed to be whole again; his love, unconditional and worth dying for.

It’s so much, but no--it will never be enough again.

…

In the morning, she cooks a breakfast; effortless and flat, pancakes without faces.  The faces, she’d tried for a few days after the battle ended, but Henry had looked at them with so much discomfort that she’d regretted thinking that a simple trick--like magic, false magic--could ever fool him into feeling at ease. 

He had stayed, and that meant everything, but neither of them could pretend that nothing was going to change; not with Emma gone.

Today, it’s pancakes for her and a sugary cereal for Henry, because he ate them for eleven years in another world and does not appear to have suffered for it.  He’s lost too much already; his cereal, he can keep, and she swallows a relieved sigh when he actually attacks it with some gusto.  Pulp free juice is poured into two glasses, and he toasts with her, the way he once would have with Emma; a quick, “Bottoms up, kid” that made him grin before the grimace that inevitably followed the pounding back of the glasses.

They go through such motions together, but it does nothing to make the kitchen less bare; it’s devoid of things he’s drawn throughout the years, because their actual family portraits now ring false.  She has stacks of drawing upstairs, labeled anything from MO to MOMY to MOMMY as he aged, but two stick figures with jagged twists of brown hair don’t make up the whole anymore. 

Henry has taped a new calendar to the fridge, but all it’s lined with it is blue and red crosses; red for the days he’s with her, blue for the days he’s at Snow’s apartment.  The schedule is flexible and varied, and some of the crosses have been wiped out and colored in several times over.  It’s not something she’ll fight them over; every time Eugenia calls, apologetic and with a, “It’s not a good day”, she simply takes it for what it is and watches a superhero movie with her son, in the hopes that he won’t take it personally.

Henry also found an old clock radio for use in the kitchen, but after a week of listening to the motown station, turned it to alternative rock of some kind, and she lets it play at a low volume while his foot kicks against the table leg, because anything is better than the comfortable but unfamiliar silence that they’re left with otherwise.

“When is Dad coming to get you?” he asks, slurping up the last bit of his milk in a way that she should protest but can’t.  Not now. 

“First, I’m taking you to the apartment.  Alice has agreed to walk you to and from school for now--”

Any mention of Alice is enough to bring the color back to his cheeks, and she smiles as he says, “Um, that’s cool, but you’re not going to be gone for that long, are you?”

She hesitates, but ultimately admits, “I don’t know, Henry.”

She glances at the clock above the counters, ticking away steadily as if time will always be utterly immutable, no matter what she does, and resists the urge to pull him in close and keep him near.  Henry will be here when she returns; she’s learning to trust in that much, at least.

“Go brush your teeth,” she says, and Henry reaches for his napkin, dabs at his mouth, pushes his chair back against the table and then pounds back up the stairs.  She hears water come on and starts slowly gathering the plates and leftover food on the table, before washing everything by hand, a habit building simply because it makes part of the day pass.

Eventually, she has no choice but to go upstairs, and she lets the magic play between her fingers as she does every morning, faced with an either made or unmade bed that is too large, too familiar, too tied up with memories that she must learn to let go of now.

Her fingers crackle with energy, but as she raises her hands, she already knows that she can’t do it.

It was the one room left untouched by Emma’s spell, wardrobe notwithstanding, and it’s all she has left of a life well and truly lost to her now.

Her hands turn impotent, and she curls her fingers up and heads to the bathroom, where she’ll stand under the shower for a long while, willing hope to come back to her after an absence so very long, and so very profound.

…

Neal is leaning against a black sedan outside of the diner, eating a bear claw and glancing at his watch as she heads over, hands buried in her coat pockets as a chilly wind gusts up and down Main. 

She doesn’t look to the gaping hole in the middle of the street; doesn’t look at the Sheriff’s Department across from it.  All she does is look at Neal, who stuffs the rest of his breakfast into his mouth and then sticks up a hand in greeting.

“How do we do this?” he asks, as she comes to a halt in front of him; he’s wearing a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses that look like they were bought at a gas station, but his suit is impeccable as ever. 

She rolls her eyes.  “ _We_ do nothing.  You simply drive through the boundary and--”

“Then we pray?” he asks, before shifting the sunglasses up into his hair.

She shakes her head, and curls her left hand into a fist, feeling a small diamond dig into the wrinkled flesh of her palm.  After a second, she just barely licks at her lips and says, “I’m counting on something more substantial than divine intervention, dear.”

He studies her carefully, and then smiles faintly; if she half-closes her eyes, she can almost imagine whiskers twitching.  “How do you feel about Miles Davis?”

She directs a scathing look at him, and after a second he chuckles and holds up his hands.

“I know it’s not important, but I thought I’d ask, okay?  It’s a long drive to Boston.”

 _Yes, it is_ , Regina thinks, and then heads to the passenger side of the car, gingerly settling in it and twisting the rings around her fingers until they feel perfectly settled; the way Emma once left them on her, promising her a different kind of happily ever after.

…

The radio hums low, some jittery jazz that has her legs rattling unwillingly, and Neal guns the gas like he’s on the run from law enforcement; her hand curl around the edges of the seat as he glances at her one last time, pine trees and overgrowth swallowing up their car on all sides, until he says, “Ready?”

She takes a deep breath, stares at the sign ominously declaring that they are  _Leaving Storybrooke,_ and then closes her eyes; sees Emma, sees nothing but Emma, and then--

…

“Regina?  Hey--”

A hand on her arm, jostling her, and she blinks at it rapidly before glancing up at the man next to her.

“Do you--hey, Regina, look at me--are you okay?  Do you know who you are?”

The car pulls over abruptly, that question is repeated, and she opens her mouth because obviously, her name is-- _do you remember do you remember_ \--her name is-- _do you remember the first time we_ \--her name is-- _the first time I said I thought I maybe loved you and you said loving isn’t something one ‘maybe’ does, Miss Swan_ \--her name is-- _and you had that incredibly annoyed look on your face, yep, that’s the one.  Right there.  That’s when I knew it was real_ \--her name is--

_Do you remember?_


	3. Chapter 3

1.

 _I get it all the time_  
 _Bright eyes to bat and hide behind_  
 _But I know they’re just for show, honey_  
 _Painful and just for show_  
Matthew Good, “99% of Us is Failure”  
  
…  
  
 _Eight Weeks Ago_  
  
…  
  
“What did you do?” Henry demands, and the accusation in his voice is an abrupt reminder of a life she thought she'd left behind.   
  
Regina’s eyes are on Emma, however, yanking a suitcase out from inside of the closet and staring at the clothes in the wardrobe, before knocking the suitcase onto its side and just heading back to her nightstand.   
  
On it: A phone.  Car keys.  Earrings.  A necklace.   
  
As Emma starts to grapple for these items, she catches sight of the rings on her fingers.  She stares at them, visibly gags, and then rips them off and lets them clatter onto the wooden surface, the hum of the spinning metal echoing through the room for a moment.  
  
“Stop,” Regina says; it’s a hoarse plea, a voice she hasn’t heard on herself in over forty years now.  It’s a voice that Cora reduced her to, hand in Daniel’s chest, tugging and squeezing and proving a point.  
  
Emma’s eyes are wild when they meet hers, head craning around abruptly.  “Or what?  You’ll--shackle me to the wall with some of your magic tree branch crap?  Or you’ll yank my heart out?  Or are you just going to frame me for a murder I didn’t commit?  I guess Gold kidnapping me is out of the question given that he’s not _here_ , although who knows--maybe he’s back, too!”  
  
At that washlist of reminders, Henry stops asking questions.  All Regina can think of doing is folding her hands together, tucking them behind her back, hiding them; Emma has to understand just how unarmed she is, but it seems to not matter.  The only thing Emma does is head for the bedroom door, shoving her phone in her pocket as she shoulders it open and makes for the stairs.  
  
Regina follows, until Henry tugs on the belt of her robe and asks, “Mom--what did you _do_?”  
  
This time, it’s a real question, and she hears a crash downstairs and ignores it because her son is looking at her in a way that suggests that she’s going to have the benefit of the doubt, for once in her life.  He looks at her like he wants to believe, and so she sinks to her knees in front of him and says, “I promise you, we were trying to do the right thing.”  
  
It’s the _we_ that has his eyes grow distant, and he stares at a nondescript spot on the wall just past her head, before putting a hand on her shoulder.  It’s clear after a second that he doesn’t realize he’s done it, but she covers it with her own hand, and they both jolt as the door to the safe downstairs slams shut with enough force for the bedroom wall to rattle.  
  
“Where is Ma going?” Henry asks, and it jars her back into action.  
  
She can’t remember the last time she’s moved this fast; away from her mother, she presumes, but it will have been ages ago.  The joy of magic is that it necessitates very little running, and even at just the memory of the power she cultivated over the years, she feels it rush down to her fingertips, dizzying her momentarily with just how much it hurts.  
  
In the foyer, there isn’t a single family portrait in sight anymore; there is just Emma, checking the safety on her gun, hair a tangled mess in her face, lips chapped and eyes red.  
  
“Give me a chance to--” Regina starts to say, when she reaches the bottom of the stairs.  On bare feet, she suddenly feels small; smaller still because she knows she’ll never use magic against Emma, now.  
  
The fact that Emma holsters the gun after a second means that Emma knows it too, but even so, she roughly says, “I don’t need an explanation.  I remember everything; I remember--wishing for a better life for everyone.  A good family for Henry.  _Happiness_.  Fucking--world peace.  I was Miss Universe up in that clock tower and--”  
  
The sentence trails off with a wet noise in Emma’s throat, and then there are tears in her eyes; tears she forcibly banishes with balled hands before shaking her head.  
  
“This can’t be happening,” she then says, more to herself than to Regina.  “How could you and I ever--”  
  
If Regina takes a few slow steps forward, it’s by some unspoken magnetic pull; she can feel the magic shifting in Emma, even if Emma doesn’t appear to have any visible idea that it’s happening.  
  
“You know how,” she says, coming to a halt about a foot and a half away from Emma, looking faintly up at her in a way that she’s so very rarely looked up at people at all.  When it wasn’t pure power compensating for her short stature, it was footwear, always.  Right now, though, she has nothing.  She’s as bare as she’s ever been, as Emma wipes a rough palm underneath her left eye and then stares at her, angry and helpless and out of her depth.  
  
 _What do we do?_ in the hospital, _What do we do?_ in the middle of an uneven war.  
  
Emma doesn’t voice it now; just swallows thickly and says, “I didn’t wish for you.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I didn’t wish for--anything like that.  I could never--”  
  
The sentence trails off and Emma deflates completely.  For a second, Regina thinks she’ll simply sit down, the way she’d once made Cora sit down in almost exactly the same spot.  Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Henry hovering by the balustrade.  It’s a minor miracle he hasn’t yet charged down to the rescue, to remind them all of what _the book_ would say about this: he's forever a little White Squire, offering storybook endings to people whose lives cannot possibly be simplified enough to fit in three hundred illustrated pages.  
  
Emma sucks in a deep breath and then skittishly glances around the foyer again, stripped of everything that made it a home.  “What happens when spells like this end?  Are we all back to how we were before?  When I broke the curse, nothing happened to the town so where the hell are all the things--”  
  
“It’s not the same.  I cast that curse from nothing.  This was an overlay; tracing paper over the existing town blueprints.”  
  
“And people who aren’t in town anymore?” Emma asks, sounding sick with dawning consequence.  “The boundary?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Regina admits.  
  
Emma looks at her in a way that makes her want to crawl out of her skin--as if the total extent of her sins is carved on every inch of her bare skin, as if somewhere inside of her lies a blackened, dead heart and Emma can see right through her--and then says, “We did it all for nothing.  They’re just going to keep fighting.  People are going to keep dying, and all I have to show for it are memories of being married to--”  
  
“A _lot_ has changed,” Regina says, ignoring that Henry is watching them; ignoring anything but the way Emma twitches at that statement.  “And you forget that many, including your father--”  
  
“Don’t,” Emma cuts her off.  
  
Of all the showdowns they’ve had in the foyer, and there have been many, it’s the muted nature of this one that fills Regina with a hopelessness she hasn’t felt in months.  It grips her heart and winds outwards until her entire body feels coiled, but to do what, she’s not sure.  She’s not sure at all, because this is all up to Emma, now.  She hasn’t truly been at anyone’s mercy in years, but Emma might as well have a sword at her neck.  
  
For a few seconds, nobody moves.  Then, Emma looks to the front door, and her expression crumples hideously.  
  
The idea that nothing at all has changed is ludicrous when Regina knows what she’s thinking immediately.  “That is not an option--”  
  
“Not for anyone but me,” Emma says, and it’s in the half-sentences that they don’t voice that the girl’s eyes cloud over again, visibly shaken by how hard it is to undo a marriage even if it wasn’t ever real.  “But it’s what I should have done.  It’s what I would have done if you’d just _let_ me.”  
  
Henry takes a tentative step down the stairs and asks, “Ma--what are you--”  
  
Emma flinches at the name, but sucks in a deep breath and turns to him all the same, and then seemingly forces leaden legs to carry her halfway up the stairs again, until she can put a hand on his shoulder.  “Kid, your mom will keep you safe.  You know she will.”  
  
The shock on his face makes Regina teeter temporarily.  Emma’s fall from grace is so abrupt that he only dwells on surprise for a second, and then he shifts to righteous anger.  Indignation of the kind that he’s only ever projected at his other mother; the bad one, the one who could never do right.  It swells in him so suddenly that he can’t even say what he’s so visibly feeling, and all he ends up getting out is, “The savior doesn’t _quit_.”  
  
Emma takes the blow; absorbs it clean, and doesn’t stop facing him as he repeats it a second time, even more bitterly this time.  
  
“You’re right.  A real savior doesn’t.”  
  
Henry’s already backing away before Regina can even think to say anything, and Emma watches him go, stoic even in these final moments of utter defeat, before heading back down the stairs.  
  
“I find it hard to believe you’d really leave him with--”  
  
“You’re a good mother,” Emma says, in a small voice that nonetheless rings true.  “No matter what else you are, you’re a good mother.  And--I know what the town wants.  An exile, for whoever’s responsible for doing this.  It’s what Mary Margaret and David were going to do to you before all hell broke loose before.”  
  
Regina wonders if she looks as exasperated as she feels.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  They’ll never exile their own daughter--”  
  
“Well, they fucking _should_ ,” Emma explodes, and all the glass in the foyer blows with her; a vein throbs in her forehead for just a second, and then she covers her own mouth, eyes tracking the wrecked light bulbs and windows around them.   
  
“Emma, what you did--”  
  
“Don’t.  So help me God, if you’re nice to me right now, if you actually try to make it okay somehow, I don’t even know what will happen,” Emma says, covering her face with both hands.  
  
Every bit of Emma’s body starts to shake, and Regina extends her hand and ignores the pain that follows when she sweeps aside the glass that had hailed down from the candelabra overhead.  It’s the sharp stab of telekinesis or touching Emma, and the latter, she knows she won’t be allowed to do; not now.  No, the best she can do is focus on magic she's regained again.  When the glass nearest to them has formed into a small pile in the corner of the foyer, she runs a hand down her own body and grits her teeth together as clothing materializes on her skin.  
  
“Leaving will solve nothing,” she says, after Emma takes a few deep breaths and then tremulously lowers her hands again.  
  
“It will give them someone to blame.  There’s nothing to create peace like a common enemy.”  
  
Regina feels her eyebrows contract before she can stop it.  “Machiavelli?”  
  
“Chapter ten of the book,” Emma says, with trembling lips and a rough voice.  “The kingdoms come together to displace the evil queen.”  
  
There is so much Regina longs to say, but can’t.  Even so, it must be written all over her face, because Emma averts her eyes again and shakes her head.   
  
“I never wanted it to end,” she then says, so softly that it’s almost inaudible with the crunch of even more glass hitting the steps that lead up to the dining room.  “I never wanted to come back here at all.  I was happy, and my life was normal.  I was just--a person, and now I’m ....  You of all people--”  
  
“It’s not fair, but it’s what we have.”  
  
For a moment, Emma just presses her lips together painfully hard; then, she says, “I can’t be what they want me to be.”  
  
“So be who you _are_ ,” Regina says, and doesn’t stop herself from reaching this time; her arm aches with the darkness of the magic that has just coursed through it, but as soon as her fingertips land on the back of Emma’s hand, the hurt melts away and she’s left with a potent mixture of grief and regret and shame and guilt.  It's all Emma, in soft pink hues, bubbling up to the surface.  “Anyone who truly matters won’t care about anything else.”  
  
Emma takes a deep breath.  “I just have to get--”  
  
“Give it a day.  The cabin in the woods is unoccupied; you can stay there, if you--” Regina starts to say, only realizing how desperate she sounds when Emma’s eyes open again and look at her knowingly.  She’s virtually pleading; a queen on her knees, for the second time in minutes.  All that’s missing is the word, but she doesn’t need to articulate it; what she does instead is swallow up the rest of her own begging and add an utterly manipulative but no less true, “Try; for Henry’s sake.”  
  
Emma scoffs and almost smiles, in a lost and bitter way.  “What the fuck difference is a single day going to make, Regina?  What is a day going to change about what I’ve done?”  
  
“You’d be surprised--”  
  
Her sentence dies in her throat when loud banging sounds on the door, followed by a shrill, “ _Regina, where is she?  I swear if you don’t open up right now_ \--” that has them both craning their heads around.   
  
“God,” Emma chokes out, and she takes an involuntary step backwards, heels impacting with the staircase all over again.  “How did they get here so fast?”  
  
It’s clearly not what she’s actually thinking, and Regina keeps her mouth shut when James says, “Snow--move aside, I’ll break it down--here, take Leo--”  
  
Henry reappears at the top of the stairs, the book tucked under his arm; he stares down, face pale and confused and says, “Why aren’t you opening up?  It’s just Gramps and Grandma--”  
  
Emma looks like she might vomit all over again, and then snaps eyes so wounded up to Regina that Regina takes a step forward long before Emma even reaches for her and whispers, “Get me out of here; please.  I can’t--”  
  
The _please_ isn’t necessary, Regina wants to say.  Anything; anything at all, but that’s not the kind of sentiment that’s appropriate or desired by this Emma, in this world.  She looks up at Henry’s, his checkered pajama pants,  his bare feet, and snaps--as imperiously as she can, against any instinct she might have--”Come here, Henry.  _Now_ , or we will have to leave you behind.”  
  
His mouth falls open and some part of her wonders dimly what she’s like to him in these moments; as surreal as that Loki character, bent on world domination and whisking around the world like the laws of gravity and matter don’t matter at all.  She has spent so long being a despot that it’s only in his eyes that she realizes how ugly a role it is.  
  
The effect of that tone of voice, is instantaneous all the same; Henry stumbles down the stairs, clutching the book the way other children--with normal lives, oh God, the normal life they’d given him and she’d taken away again; was it selfish or right?  Was it necessary?  Could she have--  
  
“Where are we going?” Henry asks, tremulous and younger-sounding than he has in months now.  
  
“If the boundary is intact again, I don’t know if I can get us past it; you both will be fine but I don't know--” Regina says, the words acrid in her mouth.  She doesn’t care about herself; only about the success of this escape that Emma has trusted her with, but when Emma looks at her wildly she realizes that they cannot pretend the last year hasn’t happened at all.  
  
Even with the light in her eyes slowly petering out, Emma cannot hide the flint of concern that washes through them at the thought of losing even more than they’ve already lost.  
  
“What you said before.  We’ll go there,” Emma says, staring at the door as if willing it to stay shut even as the first heavy impact of James’ shoulder sounds.  Leo starts crying--pitiful, needy wails that Regina knows she could soothe with a single rock in her arms, unlike his own mother--and Snow adds a pitchy, “Get out of the way, if you can’t do this I’ll--”  
  
Emma’s eyes dart to the door, then back to Regina.  “We should get my car; it’s at the clock tower.  They  might think we just left town.  Henry and I, I mean.”  
  
“And where will they think I’ve gone?” Regina asks, hushed and urgent, looking at Emma sharply as Henry’s hand slots into her free one.  As she pulls the magic forward it aches on one side of her body, but where she’s touching Emma, white washes all over her, until her limbs feel languid like they had when she was a teenager--oh so long ago--and her muscles bent to the will of horses.  “They obviously think that I’ve hurt you already, so--”  
  
Behind her, a hinge screams and the wood creaks as James batters it again, and Emma squeezes her hand as tight as she had once many years ago, when Henry was still within her, screaming to come out.  He burrows in closer again now, wedging between them, the way he’d once been the only thing tying them together at all.  
  
“You’d never hurt Ma, though. Not anymore,” he says, muffled against Emma’s jacket.  
  
His faith doesn’t so much as tremble in the face of what they’ve done, but the last thing Regina sees before everything physical starts to disintegrate and becomes nothing more but pure form--herself, dark, surrounded by light on all sides--is the way that Emma’s burns out altogether, until her eyes close and one final breath ghosts out from between her lips.  
  
Then, they’re gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Glamour has always been more her mother’s forte than her own, but Regina knows from experience that she can do a passable job of it when there’s a serious need.  Her wards wouldn’t stop Cora or Rumpelstiltskin from seeing that there are people in the cabin, but they will deter less practiced magic users.  She doubts that Snow and Charming’s next stop will be Jafar’s, in any event, and the fairies are too dependent on dust that this world doesn’t carry to really pose any sort of long-term opposition--and in those circumstances, her rusty magic will more than suffice.  
  
With Cora and Rumpel gone, she’s likely to be the best Storybrooke has to offer, magically.  It’s a bittersweet thought, given how long she’s clung to the notion that she could actually be that powerful and have it mean something; all it means now is that she stands outside of a decrepit wooden structure and bites down on her own tongue to stop from swooning with how much it hurts to cast.   
  
Without a comparison--without any ability to feel--she might’ve never known how horrible her magic is, but now that she does, the headaches and the bleeds and the way her bones always feel as though they’re shattering all blend together into one overwhelming truth.  
  
Able as she might be, this was never her purpose.  
  
She can feel her skin pull taut and start to wrinkle all at once, as if the years are catching up to her, and then lets go of the last burst she has in her with a weak moan, before falling to her knees.  As she stretches out her fingers, they meet a nearly-invisible barrier all the same, bouncing her back gently.  She lowers her forehead to the ground and takes a few deep breaths and closes her eyes.  Wonders why she didn’t take them to the hidden residence in the mausoleum; James has the keys, of course, but that would not prevent someone with her control over matter from entering.  
  
A shaky laugh escapes her at the idea of Emma’s face at her hideout.  A cave for a queen she is no longer; dresses and riches and sharp blacks and whites and blood-reds.  Silver enough to bury whole kingdoms; but never gold, no, not in her safe spaces.  Only in public, when it had felt like a message that her master needed to be reminded of.  _I’m not afraid of you_ , years of _I’m not afraid of you_ directed at a man who had made what remained of her heart quiver.  
  
Feet rustling the leaves behind her have her tiredly pushing up, and she sees Henry’s magically reproduced sneakers in the periphery of her vision before he’s actually in front of her, kneeling down slowly--a squire before a queen, she thinks, dimly--and then putting an awkward hand on her shoulder.  
  
“You’re hurt,” he says, quietly; studying her face, the way blood vessels in her eyes have blown.  Streaks of near-black undulate down from her nose, and when he reaches out to her ear and his fingertips come back wet, she swallows thickly and says, “I’m sorry.  About the magic.  It’s--”  
  
“You're trying to help,” he tells her, and looks back to the cabin.  “Emma, Mom’s hurt--can you--”  
  
“Henry, don’t,” Regina says, wondering what she can possibly say to explain to him that the family he’d become used to is abruptly no more.  
  
The words earn her a scathing look that he must’ve absorbed from her, and of course he’s right; no matter what else is true for Emma, not helping is alien to her. 

The cabin door swishes open and Regina struggles to her feet, unwilling to look as poorly as she feels.  Not that Emma wouldn’t be able to deliver several fatal blows without trying regardless, but the least she can do is resemble the woman that Emma obviously sees, looking at her now.  
  
Emma mutely takes in her ravaged appearance and then looks at Henry.  “There’s a first aid kit in the trunk of the car, kid.  Can you--”  
  
Henry nods, relieved at having a mission, and Emma tosses him car keys in a gentle arc, the way she has tossed so many baseballs to him in another life.  Regina wonders if she’s alone in thinking it, but can see by the way that Emma’s encouraging smile doesn’t reach her eyes that even if they’re not on the exact same wavelength anymore, they’re close.  Closer than they have any right to be.  
  
“There isn’t anything for you to bandage here--” she says, when Henry is out of eyesight; she wipes a hand under her own nose and looks at the blood on it.  Thick, so vivid and thick and rich.  She can smell the elements in it; years of potion-making have made her skin prickle with all the atoms around her in a way that seems second-nature.  
  
“I know,” Emma says, and then takes a seemingly confident step forward.  Her hand lifts a second later, and it shakes every inch it moves forward, but Emma’s eyes don’t waver.  “I thought you could--take what you needed.  Or does it not work like that?”  
  
Dimly, Regina recalls once scathingly telling Emma that she wasn’t a battery, and it had been a lie.  She just hadn’t wanted to seem weak; incapable of doing right by Henry.  She _is_ a battery; Emma is nuclear fission in process, a constant hum of energy that will only stop when her heart stops beating.  
  
“I don’t want to do anything that’ll make you uncomfortable,” she says, as plainly as she can.  
  
Emma looks at her mouth and then laughs shortly, a hysterical little bark.  “It’s a little late for that, Regina.  Not that--that’s your fault.  I just--between what we did that last day here and how many times I’ve seen you naked--”  
  
Emma stops talking and just unfurls her fingers, stretching out her hand for an exaggerated high-five; the movement emphatic enough to preclude further discussion.  
  
Regina glances at the car--Henry’s legs almost off the ground now, as he cants forward into the trunk--and reaches for Emma’s hand, lacing their fingers together.  Her blood sings, immediately, and then slowly starts to calm, treading around regularly again as her heart grows stronger with every second they touch.  Emma’s irises pinken, the way that the whole world had done in the clock tower, and her lips part to let a whisper of air out; a soundless moan of something that might be pleasure or pain.  Whatever it is, it isn’t for Regina to find out, and--calling on years of harsh training, of always _almost_ living up to Rumpelstiltskin’s expectations--she pulls away as soon as she’s had enough.  
  
As they separate, Emma looks at her own fingertips with visible grief.  
  
“Not all magic is bad,” Regina says, as Henry drops a green box on the muddied ground and then, with a giant heave, pulls the trunk closed again.  “I know your experiences with it so far have left a lot to be desired--”  
  
“Is there any way to undo it?  This … thing between us?” Emma asks, roughly.  “The thing that makes my magic work for you?”  
  
Regina looks at her; wonders if her face betrays that she feels like she’s just been slapped.  The ways in which true love is a privilege are obviously not clear to Emma on any level, even separately from the fact that she probably would prefer to feel it for someone else.  
  
“The only way I know of to stop loving is a potion your mother once took to forget about your father,” she says, as Henry lifts the box with a grunt and heads back to them.  “It stripped her of all ability to feel.  Given that you’re quite literally _made_ of love, I shudder to think what it would do to you.”  
  
“So it’s you or nothing, huh,” Emma exhales, and then presses a hand to her mouth.  “That’s--”  
  
It’s probably not kindness that makes Emma stop talking, but she stops all the same, swallowing thickly before heading back to the cabin, one dragging step at a time.  Henry watches her go but then continues on his way; making choices he never would have a year ago, when he would’ve let Regina bleed out just to follow in Emma’s perfect footsteps.  
  
Emma isn’t so perfect anymore, nor is she herself the horror he wanted to flee from then, and it shows on her son’s face that he can only deal with that by making small, practical decisions.  
  
“What do you need, Mom?” he asks, putting the kit down on the ground and snapping it open slowly, before staring at the plethora of supplies there; remnants of the life of a woman who spent weeks living in her car, chasing after criminals, running them down with no regard for self.  
  
Regina kneels in front of her son and, taking a deep breath, goes with the simpler answer to that question.  “A cotton pad and some disinfectant will do for now.”  
  
…  
  
The cabin is shaded, dank, shockingly cold for this time of year.  Henry’s teeth chatter after fifteen minutes of awkward silence inside and Regina is about to whisk back to the house just to get some clothing when Emma shakes her head, drops her car keys on the table, and says, “I’ll start a fire.  The smoke won’t--”  
  
“No,” Regina says.  
  
More silence.  
  
The wood chips crackle weakly, but the third match that Emma lights against the chimney stack and then painstakingly sticks into some dry foliage takes hold.  
  
Regina watches from the dining table, a crooked-legged chunk of wood that hasn’t seen diners or anything other than dust in years now, as she stays crouched in front of it, hands folded together tightly.  Whatever Emma is thinking, it’s a silent prayer that she’s not party to.  
  
Next to her, Henry is stoic and small, flipping through pages in the book with an increasingly more concerned expression dawning on his face, until he reaches the very end of the book and runs his finger past the jagged edges of the ending that he ripped out.  An attempt to compel destiny, rather than escape it, Regina knows.  He looks very regretful of it all the same.  
  
Eventually, he shuts the book again, the covers coming together heavily, and then looks at Regina.  “There’s nothing in the book about a curse like that.  One that _makes_ happy endings.”  
  
“No, there wouldn’t be,” she says, glancing at the haphazard family history that has plagued her for the better part of two years now; incomplete stories, replete with narrative bias, all to propel Henry towards a single goal.  _The queen is dead, long live the queen_.  “That story ended when--”  
  
“When Emma broke the curse,” he says, quietly, as if to spare Emma’s feelings.  The cabin isn’t large enough for her to not hear, however; even in the little annexed bedroom, the words would probably travel underneath the wooden door.  “I know.  Except that... it’s like that was only the first step.”  
  
Regina feels like she could sleep for five days.  The kettle behind them whistles and Emma pushes up on her feet again; doesn’t look at either of them as she heads towards it, and with rough movements, starts making them all tea.  Her fingers hesitate as they clutch a spoon, hovering over the sugar bowl, but then keep going anyway.  There is no use in pretending she doesn’t know how they all take their hot drinks.  
  
“It’s like some people were happy, but--Emma didn’t have anyone to be happy with,” Henry says, his fingertip tracing out the _O_ in _Once Upon a Time_.  His lips press together tightly for a second before he adds, “And neither did you, Mom.”  
  
The sugar spoon clatters to the ground, and liquid sloshes over the mugs as Emma turns and puts them on the dining table, with a rough, “Here” that sounds like a curse word.  
  
There is something shrewd about the way that Henry watches as Emma reaches for a dishrag and starts dabbing at the spill on the ground, but he ultimately just looks at Regina again.  “I think the savior was meant to save everyone.  _Even_ you.”  
  
Words like that would’ve wounded, months ago, but he’s discussing her as a historical anecdote now; an actual character in a book, not a real person.  It’s clear that he considers her rehabilitated, and it makes her feel so very, very tired.  Her eyes water without permission as he looks at her, Emma’s nose on his face, Emma’s dimples on his cheeks.  Eventually, he reaches for her hand and holds it, as if to say that it’s okay.  Whatever it is, it’s okay now.  She’s good again, and everything will be fine.  
  
A third chair scrapes across the wooden floor a moment later, and Emma slumps down onto it, wrapping her hands around a burning-hot mug and staring at it blankly.  
  
“You were the ones who broke the new curse, weren’t you?” Henry asks, his fingers tightening around Regina’s as if stopping her from bolting.  “With true love’s kiss?”  
  
Emma’s eyes lift and stare at her sharply for a second, but then she just squeezes her lips together until they whiten and goes back to studying her tea.  
  
“No, we were not,” Regina says, which isn’t even a lie; _she’d_ kissed _Emma_.  An oblivious, happy Emma, who had wanted to make love first thing in the morning and whose greatest concern in life was how to get a cat from a tree without getting stuck in it herself.  “That’s--Henry, truthfully, I’m not entirely sure what happened, but--”  
  
His fingers go limp around hers, and then he says, “Oh”, as if news of the defeat has come unexpectedly from far away.  “I thought that--”  
  
“It was … only the spell,” Regina says, smoothly as she can.  Her tongue twists around the words but conquers them, as she’s conquered so many things throughout the years.  “We were together because of the spell, but that’s all.”  
  
Henry says nothing for a long moment. “So is the boundary back?”  
  
“I don’t know.  It may be.”  
  
“And what about Mr. Gold?  He left town.  So is he--” Henry asks, before frowning, as if unsure how to ask anything else.  
  
The thought makes her skin crawl--the man is a predator with so very little conscience; out there in a world that has no means for coping with him--but even then, she can’t bring herself to truly care.  Not when Emma’s unseeing eyes grow wet and her fingers start to tremble against the mug all over again.  
  
“I think--” she starts, and then looks at Henry.  “Sweetheart, why don’t you call your grandparents?”  
  
“What?” Emma asks, eyes lashing up abruptly.  
  
“They should know that you and Emma are both okay."  
  
“They’ll want to know where we are,” he points out, reasonably, even as Emma adds, “What are you playing at, Regina?  They’ll turn the whole town inside out if they know we’re--”  
  
“Say you’re outside of the boundary and that you think it’s intact again; that Emma wanted to go all the way back to Boston, but you talked her into giving it a few days,” Regina says, with an askance look to Emma, who doesn’t even have the heart to look disgruntled at being painted a deserter.  “That you’ll be back soon.”  
  
Henry mulls over her instructions for a moment, but ultimately reaches into his coat pocket for his phone and says, “Okay.  And if they ask where you are?”  
  
“Whatever you want to tell them will be fine,” Regina says, when nothing more concrete than that comes to mind.  
  
Henry favors her with a serious nod and then heads towards the bedroom, and Regina slumps back in her chair and takes a sip of tea with trembling, aged hands.  She feels it go down, hot and heavy, and then looks across the way, at where Emma is pressing a palm into her cheek, rubbing tears she doesn’t want to spill dry.  
  
“Why lie to him?”  
  
“Because,” Regina says, almost managing a small smile.  “If he were to know the truth, he’d make it his life’s mission to bring us … together.  Operation _True Love_ , or what have you.”  
  
Emma shudders, but eventually lets go of a broken chuckle as well.  
  
“I--” Regina starts to say, before glancing at the door as Henry’s voice picks up in volume in the other room.  
  
“No,” Emma cuts her off, before anything else can get said.  “Yesterday morning, the world was ending, as far as I was aware--except it wasn’t really.  I was in bed with you.  I was _sleeping_ in a bed with you; not just....”  She prods at her cheek with her tongue, and then sighs.  “You know.  Drunken three am fantasies, the kind you’ll never talk about out loud and definitely never would in ten million years act on.  Your kid’s mother; that crazy bitch who tried to frame your best friend for murder, but goddamn if she doesn’t know how to wear a blazer.”  
  
The bitterness with which the confession comes out, so quietly that it’s almost toneless, has Regina lowering her eyes. “Believe me, I hardly thought--”  
  
“Did I.... like, wish you gay, or something?” Emma asks tentatively, only barely glancing up.  “Because I just don’t get it.  I don’t get how--you know, if I’d remembered, I would’ve run screaming from that life.  But you just--”  
  
She’s cut off by an unexpectedly loud, “ _Grandma,_ she’s not going to do that.  She could have done that all of last year, because she knew everything all along.  And she didn’t.  They just watched movies together and made pasta.”  
  
The memories glance off Emma’s face, and her eyes close briefly, but then she sucks in a deep breath and just drinks some of her tea.  
  
“You can’t _wish_ people to feel things they categorically do not.  Your father’s marriage to Abigail speaks for that in volumes,” Regina says, looking carefully at how Emma swallows brokenly; how she then wipes at her mouth and shakily puts the mug back down on the table.  “So no, you didn’t turn me gay--”  
  
“You’d been with women before?”  
  
Regina arches her eyebrows, and mutedly says, “Had you?”  
  
“Well, yeah.  I mean...”  After a moment, Emma just scoffs and says, “I want to say _obviously_ but I don’t know if any of this is obvious.”  
  
“I assumed you had been; those false memories were a little too informed to--”  
  
Emma winces and holds up a hand as if shielding a blow.  
  
“To answer your question--no.  I hadn’t slept with a woman before, but then... after Daniel, the only trysts I’ve had were with men who worked for me.  They were functional at best.  An affair with a woman, especially back home, would have taken far more planning than I ever would have engaged in over something... utterly meaningless.”  
  
Emma says nothing, not immediately, and then just closes her eyes tightly and drops her elbows to the table, rubbing at her forehead.  “You hated me.”  
  
“Hated is too strong a word.  I thought you--”  A string of words she once voiced in Archie’s office comes to mind, and she swallows them back.  “Either way, Emma.  You wished for a life in which Henry was happy; a life in which I had friends, a job that brought me joy and a family that...”  
  
“I forced you to have all of those things,” Emma says, muffled into her own palms.  “You should have just--”  
  
“Said no?”  Regina says, watching as Emma nods.  “Well, if you must know, I tried.  When the shock wore off, I attempted to leave you.  But--arranged marriages in all worlds are seemingly real marriages all the same.  Leaving would have had… devastating consequences.  Unpredictable ones.”  
  
A sick noise wells up in Emma’s throat.  “I didn’t--I never meant to do that to you or to anyone else.  Are you kidding me?  It’s--”  
  
“Not uncommon where we’re from.  Your father was due to be in an arranged marriage; your mother would have been, had I not banished her before she was of marrying age.  It was--simply what one did.”  When Emma’s hands fall away and an almost pitying look is directed at her, Regina actually feels acutely rankled.  “I don’t expect you to understand why this was hardly the most intolerable thing to have ever happened to me, so why don’t you just accept that it wasn’t and--”  
  
“God, Regina,” Emma says, and there is such loss in those two words that Regina abruptly stops talking.  
  
They stare at each other silently, until the bedroom door opens again and Henry steps back out.  
  
“They um--” he starts, and then looks between them.  “They’re pretty upset, and they want us to come to town because there's a meeting about what happened but um, nobody actually knows for sure.”  His eyes grow distant, briefly, and he adds, “I think Grandma thinks that you’re bad again, Mom, but I told her she was wrong about that.”  
  
Emma’s shoulders bunch up, and after a second she nudges the mug toward the middle of the table.  “Did they say anything else--or just that they need us to come back?”  
  
The question is exhausted; the _no, thanks_ implicit in the way that Emma asks it alone.  
  
Henry hesitates for a few seconds, but ultimately looks directly at Regina.  “Just that everyone's at the town hall, but they're not fighting anymore.”  
  
Regina smothers the _yet_ that swells in her throat.  “I see.”  
  
“That's good, right?” Henry says, and then adds, with a nod to the book, “I mean, in the book, it sounds like the bad guys always just want to um, start a huge war...”  
  
She can’t help it; she laughs, shortly, and then does sigh.  “Yes, I suppose that is the prevailing view.”  
  
When Emma catches her eye again a moment later, they both laugh again; it’s that or just breaking down altogether.  A year won; a year perhaps mostly wasted.  
  
“So what’s this meeting?” Emma asks, when the laughter tapers off and she faces Henry directly for the first time in hours.  
  
“Aunt Kathryn is trying to talk to King George and those other guys, I think,” Henry says, before shuffling back over to his chair and sitting down on it heavily.  “Gramps says to say that he loves you, Ma.  That it doesn’t matter what you did; that they just want you to come home.”  
  
The blow registers in Emma’s eyes, and after a second, she just nods.  It’s the smallest little inclines of her head, but it’s there, and Regina feels an almost irrepressible urge to head across the room and kiss her on her forehead.  It fades only when she curls her hands around the edge of the table, and out of nowhere, a pulse of magic zings at her temple.  
  
“Shh,” she hisses, as Emma opens her mouth to say something else; then, she silently slips off her chair and heads towards the kitchen window.  
  
“What is it?” Henry hisses back.  “Did the wards go off--”  
  
She holds up a hand to quiet him and then jolts when Emma soundlessly appears at her side, hand on her gun.  They make an odd pair of enforcers, Regina thinks, before lifting a finger to her lips and then pointing it out the window, towards the tree line past where the Bug is parked.  The Bug itself is invisible to anyone happening to traipse around the cabin, much as the cabin itself is, but that will not stop someone from walking into it if they happen to be making a direct line for it.  
  
Her entire body tenses, much as Emma’s coils as she pulls her gun out of its holster and grips it tightly with both hands.  The fact that the safety is still on doesn’t appear to be occurring to her, and Regina wonders what will happen if she leans in close enough to whisper as much right into Emma’s ear right now; if she’ll get thrown against a wall with a gun pressed to her chin, or if they’ll both get struck by such potent, bottled-up magic that--  
  
A flash of silver blinds her momentarily, and as she shields her eyes and hears Emma say, “ _Fuck_ ”, she realizes that she knows who’s out there--but before she can move, Emma’s already heading for the door, fishing a pair of handcuffs out of her jacket pocket and then sprinting out of the cabin.  
  
“What’s going on?” Henry asks again, in his best undercover voice--the kind he uses to whisper instructions into the walkie-talkies that were the bane of her existence for most of a year--and Regina beckons him closer, putting her hands on his shoulder as they both head towards the open door.  
  
“If you don’t fucking stop struggling I swear I will shoot your other hand off--” Emma snaps, and two seconds later, a loud yelp sounds, followed by a muttered, “Okay, okay, I like a little rough and tumble as much as the next virile man but--”  
  
“For God’s sake, shut up,” Emma snaps, and then a clink of metal sounds and she appears in view again, popping up with a few leaves in her hair and, with a sharp tug, a wrong-footed pirate tied to her own wrist.  
  
“You know, darling, it’s probably in your best interest to just let me go; it’s not like I _want_ to be hanging around in this town.  I damn near got eaten when I woke up this morning, and the crocodile I’ve been hoping to skin all these years--”  
  
“Trust me, Hook, I’m doing you a favor.”  
  
“By taking me prisoner once more?  You’ve got an interesting--”  
  
“By not letting you leave town.  There’s some serious Hotel California qualities to Storybrooke that, well, you know what?  Your BFF can fill you in,” Emma says, yanking him along as he stumbles after her.  
  
“My what?” Hook asks, but then they breach the wards, and he stops short, nearly falling over when Emma keeps moving.  “Oh.  _Oh_.  Well.  You and the Queen, hey?  Still a thing--”  
  
The look on Emma’s face would be amusing if the situation they were in was anything other than depressingly grave, and a hint of warning must show on her own face, because Killian shuts up as soon as he sees her and then lifts a stump, his hook slung around one of Emma’s belt loops.  
  
“Regina; fancy meeting you here.  Dare I presume this was all your handiwork?  Because I’m more familiar with your mother’s magic but hers is not quite this … benevolent.  This wasn’t all bad.  A year of consorting with a girl who, well, let’s just say that she was animalistic in a _different_ way--”  
  
Emma’s fist flies without warning, and Killian presses his free arm to his nose as it starts to bleed; then, Emma shakes her hand out and drags him into the cabin.  
  
“Are you going to kill him?”  Henry asks, with wide eyes.  
  
“ _No_ ,” Emma says, so forcefully that she looks taken aback by it herself; a second later, she just slams the cabin door shut again and avoids Regina’s eyes.  “We’re not killing anyone."  
  
Killian glances down and then stops moving.  “Henry,” he says, inscrutable and muffled against his arm.  
  
“Hi, Uncle Killian.  I mean, Dread Pirate Hook,” Henry says, with such a ridiculous mixture of nurtured politeness and instinctive wariness that for one second, Regina thinks she might start laughing all over again.   
  
It’s the word _uncle_ that has Killian’s face change altogether, and he doesn’t put up a fight as Emma drags him over to the corner of the cabin and shackles him to the wood stove there.  She shakes out her hand again and heads to the sink, running some ice cold water over it as Killian continues to stare at Henry for a few moments.  Eventually, he looks up at Regina.  
  
“What the bloody hell is going on?” he then asks, in the voice that her best friend used for the better part of thirty years.  Her best friend who was a good man, and who is currently nursing a cracked nose and leaning back against the cabin wall, waiting for words that can make sense of all of this.  
  
“It’s a long story,” Regina says, running a hand through Henry’s hair; if there are such words, she doesn't have them.  
  
“Well, I’m not going anywh--” Killian starts to say.  
  
That’s when the whistling sounds, distant enough to reach them only as a whisper, but loud enough for it to make everyone stop in their tracks and stare out the window at once.  
  
“What was that?” Emma asks.  
  
“Magical resonance,” Regina says, as Emma braces her arms on the sink for a few seconds, before pushing off it again and bursting out of the cabin.  Henry opens his mouth, but Regina squeezes his shoulder and leans down low, just low enough to murmur, “Let her be, Henry.  Just give her a little time to herself, okay?”  
  
Eventually, Henry nods; and with one final glance to the cabin door, he picks up his book again and heads over to where Killian is sitting, before settling on the floor by the window next to the stove.  
  
“Do you know about the first curse?” he asks, peering up at Killian, decked out in black leather, with dangling earrings and a slightly wild beard that hasn’t been trimmed much since his original capture.  
  
Still, the man’s eyes are as familiar as Emma’s jacket and her own apple tree is.  “Only that it was cast and I wasn't affected by it, little man.  Beyond that--”  
  
“Wow.  This _is_ going to be a long story,” Henry then says, but there is nothing weary as he flips the book open again and starts talking, finally having found a new, captive audience for his obsession with their past lives.


	5. Chapter 5

The sound of the blade splintering wood greets Regina long before she even heads around the side of the cabin; the car radio is playing some rock music she doesn’t know doesn’t filter it out, but seems to be giving Emma a rhythm to chop to.  
  
When she pauses next to a drainpipe, hand wrapping around it automatically, Emma glances up at her but only swipes her forearm past her forehead, jacket and long-sleeved shirt discarded on the hood of the Bug. She’s surrounded by haphazardly chopped logs, shrapnel from a firefight, and even now, just lifts the axe again and brings it down hard on a crooked piece of wood with a single, emphatic heave.  
  
The axe slips from her fingers when it lands just off-center, not cleaving the target at all, and Regina stays put as Emma punts the wood off the tree stump she’s been using as a makeshift workbench.  It doesn’t fly far, and that’s when Emma just sits down on the stump, face glistening with sweat in the afternoon sun, strands of ponytail sticking to the back of her neck.  
  
She looks so miserable that Regina takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and conjures up a bottle of Scotch from thin air; her head pounds heavily as the bottle slowly materializes in a cloud of purple, but then it’s over, and she has something concrete to give to Emma, who lifts her head faintly at the sound of the clock tower chiming miles away, but then drops it again just as quickly.  
  
A few slow steps and she’s in front of Emma, offering the bottle as the only token of peace she can.  "The resonance could have been from anything, but I imagine it was the fairies putting in place a few protective wards.  It's what I would have them do, if I was ... well."  
  
Eventually, Emma takes the bottle from her, and twists the cap off, flicking it off into the foliage surrounding the cabin.  It skitters off a part-log and then disappears from sight, and Regina watches as the sun catches on Emma’s watch and earrings as she drinks.    
  
Long swallows later, Emma stares off into the distance again and asks, “What the hell am I supposed to say to them?”  
  
It’s unclear if she means the citizens at large or her parents.  After a second, Regina crouches in front of the tree stump and looks up at Emma for the second time in a day.  Perhaps it’ll help diffuse memories of who she used to be.  
  
“The truth.”  
  
“The truth,” Emma repeats, rubbing her thumb over the lip of the bottle.  “You mean that... I chose to forget about them?  Or is the truth just that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and _everyone_ was dying, and killing your mother was a pretty damn small price to pay for--”  
  
She can’t finish the sentence and starts picking at the label on the bottle instead.  
  
“If you are going to have regrets about what we did, I wouldn’t waste them on my--” Regina starts to say, before looking at Emma’s boots briefly--the buckles dulled, leather only shiny in places--and amending her statement to, “Cora Mills should have died years ago.”  
  
“You’ve done it, right?  Stuck your hand in someone’s chest and--” Emma asks, before gesturing with the bottle and taking another hurried sip when Regina nods.  “And--you liked it?”  
  
The question is loaded enough for Regina to hesitate, and after a moment, Emma hands the bottle over.  One of them should be sober, Regina knows, but why on earth it should be her--when she’s spent _months_ sober when everyone else was in a complete state of oblivion--isn’t obvious, not when Emma is looking at her as warily as she did two years ago.  A look that screams, _I can’t put my finger on it, but something here isn’t right_.  
  
“The power is overwhelming,” she finally says, when the scotch burns low in her stomach and stops it from twisting temporarily.  “It is incredibly pleasurable, by design.  Dark magic is seductive; not like yours is.  It’s intoxicating and difficult to resist.  It is what makes mere mortals gods; utterly in control of life and death.”  
  
Emma says nothing, just rubs her fingertips over the knuckles of her other hand.  
  
“From what Henry tells us, Abigail and George are at least attempting a peace,” Regina says, handing the bottle back.  “It’s more than seemed possible before--”  
  
“Yeah,” Emma says, in an exhausted voice.  “But if these talks don’t work out, we both know how this is going to end.  Everyone who knows how to use magic aside from you was on the other side.  You’re their best shot, but they’ll never accept that because they look at you and just see--I don’t know.”    
  
“You’re talking about your parents.”  
  
Emma looks over sharply.  “You’re right.  Kathryn probably--I don’t know.  Do you think she’ll still think of you as a friend?”  
  
“Killian seems to.  It stands to reason that she’ll at the very least hear us out.”  
  
The weariest of smiles plays around Emma’s mouth.  “Yeah.  She’s good like that; rational, you know?  I guess that’s one thing I did right, in all of this.  Except--”  The bottle slips in her hand, briefly, and then she adds a low, “Kind of hard to take credit for it when it was your idea.”  
  
“Emma--”  
  
“No.  Don’t try to make it better than it is.  I... chose to do this.  I killed your mother; I cast the spell.  We could’ve stopped at any point but I went for it.  It’s my fault that Ruby ended up with that jackass in there, and that you--”    
  
The sentence trails off into nothing, but eventually Emma turns and looks at her for a very long time, before reaching out and cupping Regina’s face without warning.  Her fingertips are rough, coarse.  The axe; this life.  Regina has no idea.  It’s not as if Emma ever touched her like this before they cast the spell.  Strangling and slapping, that was the closest they’d come.  
  
Her cheek starts to sing with magic almost immediately, but it’s weakened; as if Emma’s heart is beating just a little less, down as she is.  
  
“I wish I could pretend that you’re just Henry’s mother, that that’s all that matters, but I _can’t_ ,” Emma admits, her fingers swiping past Regina’s cheek as they pull back again.  “Even if I--even if I ignore everything you did in a world that has ogres and unicorns, how am I supposed to forget all the shit you did last year?  To Mary Margaret, to Kathryn... to Graham--”  
  
Regina says nothing; she stays perfectly still as Emma’s hand retreats and all the warmth in her body swiftly follows.  
  
Emma clutches the bottle more tightly, and brings it back to her mouth, taking a long moment before tipping her head back.  When she lowers it again, she laughs shortly.  “And then I remember that it’s kind of ridiculous to think of you as a murderer, as a horrible person, because--look at what I just did.  Willingly.  I was thinking pretty clearly, you know.  I don’t think you were when you cast that curse, but--”  
  
“For God’s sake, Emma, it’s not the same thing.”.  
  
“Isn’t it?”  
  
Regina swallows at the way that Emma’s eyes darken briefly, the pulse of magic behind them, but then puts a hand on Emma’s knee that isn’t immediately knocked off.   “Your intentions were honorable; what you chose to do saved lives.  I can’t say anything of the sort was ever on my mind.”  
  
“Really?”  Emma asks, squinting at her with an eye that’s slowly starting to go bleary.  “That why you never killed anyone when you brought them here?  Why--the worst thing you ever did to Mary Margaret, in twenty eight fucking years, was keep her from David?”  
  
Her knees are starting to ache with how she’s crouching, but Emma doesn’t brush off her hand and so she stays put, until her fingers start tingling all over and prompt her to say, “Don’t credit me with kind-heartedness I wasn’t capable of.  I wanted to see your mother suffer; death would have been far too merciful an ending for her, given that I could also burden her with an eternity without her true love.”  
  
“And without her child,” Emma says, tapping her fingers against the bottle briefly.  “Except she never knew what she was missing.  That was... my fate.  Not hers.”  
  
A year prior, they’d shared scotch in Regina’s study, and Emma had sharply denied her all culpability for an unbearably lonely childhood, all the cards stacked against her by a destiny that a little girl--four, five, six, Henry’s age--would have never been able to understand.  
  
“I meant what I said, in the kitchen all those months ago,” Regina says, waiting until Emma looks at her.  “I know this means little, but I would not have let any harm come to you.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m sure.  That’s why--”  
  
“Emma, to curse your parents, I hardly needed to storm their castle.  My intentions in doing so--”  
  
She doesn’t have to say anything else; Emma stares at her in horror, and then just starts to laugh.  “No.”  
  
“I... always wanted children,” Regina says, the words unsettling and awkward.  It’s a cringe-worthy confession at best, now, but Emma laughs harder and then says, “ _God_ , there is not enough alcohol in this bottle--”, before handing it over to Regina and gesturing for her to drink as well.  
  
“For what it’s worth--” Regina says, when her eyes are burning and Emma is still laughing, in a vaguely detached, hysterical way; like a year of facts that defy all belief are starting to catch up to her all at once.  “I’m exceptionally relieved at this point that I did not succeed.”  
  
A hiccup escapes Emma, but her laughter trails off eventually anyway.  “Some hero I am, huh.  The adults are trying to clean up my mess, and I’m getting drunk with my wife--”  
  
Her face drops, all at once, and she pushes off the log, dislodging Regina’s hand and causing her to drop the bottle as well.  
  
“We’ll turn ourselves in to Kathryn tomorrow,” Emma says, pacing a few steps towards the Bug and then bending over the front seat to snap the radio off.  “Hook comes with us.  If they want to lock us up, or whatever, Henry can stay with Mary Margaret.  I know you don’t--”  
  
“She cannot protect him the way that you and I can, and he may _need_ protecting,” Regina says, sharply enough for Emma’s shoulders to hitch and her hands to disappear in her back pockets.  “Capable as your mother is with weaponry, she is no match for anyone who can use magic; and God _forbid_ Rumpelstiltskin is compelled to come back here by the spell breaking.  I understand that you’re attempting to take responsibility--”  
  
Emma shoots her a look that she doesn’t need help interpreting, and she bites back on the rest of her admonition, watching as Emma nudges a splintered log aside with the toe of her boot and then looks back at the cabin, face drawing tight again and breath seemingly lodging in her throat.  
  
“If you want me to believe that you were really _you_ , this last year,” she finally says, and glances at Regina just once more, “then prove it to me, Regina.”  
  
The challenge is overly simplistic, juvenile, impractical, and decidedly not in Henry’s best interest, but as Emma shuffles back to the cabin, legs leaden and shoulders slumping, Regina realizes that she’s going to meet it all the same.  
  
Her heart simply will not permit her to do anything else.  
  
...  
  
Dinner is a stack of simple sandwiches; peanut butter and jelly squares that Emma and Henry pop back with gusto and that Killian eyes for a long moment before finally having a few as well.  
  
They’re presumably the worst meal he’s had in eight months, and that realization subdues him for most of the evening, as Emma and Henry play a card game at the kitchen table and Regina herself attempts to ward off a migraine by lying down for a short while in the bedroom.  
  
Emma could simply touch her, but dependency like that--  
  
No, she closes her eyes and tries to clear her head, and only opens them again when she hears Henry’s socked feet shuffle into the room with her, until he settles at the foot of the bed and silently studies her.  
  
"Do you think they'll arrest you, tomorrow?" he finally asks.  
  
He's such a child of this world; a more severe fate than an arrest doesn't occur to him outside of horror stories that he's read in books he is technically too young to read.  It makes her slouch up against the headboard and fluff her hair briefly, until she looks more in control than she feels; might ever feel again.  
  
"It's possible," she finally says, because she's promised him honesty; if nothing else, honesty.    
  
"And ... Emma, too?"  
  
She nods, and watches as he lowers his eyes to the blanket, mouth working silently for a few seconds.  "So I'd stay with Grandma and Gramps?"  
  
"I realize this is difficult, but--"  The corner her mouth twists at the irony of her saying this, of him needing to be told, but it's the truth regardless.  "Trying to do the right thing doesn't always mean that you actually manage, Henry.  We--did something drastic.  If the council believes that we need to atone for it--"  
  
"I don't want you to be sent away," Henry says, his eyes darting back up her, and the amount of concern and love in them makes the rest of her vaguely hypocritical commentary on justice die in her throat.  "Or anything worse than that.  You knew who you were, the entire year, and you were a good person.  You were--you weren't just trying.  You were _better._ "  
  
She takes a deep breath.  "Henry, I doubt that Princess Abigail--"  
  
"If that's what they want to do, I think you should use magic and disappear," he blurts out.  "And you should take Emma with you.  You should do that teleporting thing, and then Gramps and Grandma and I will try to convince everyone else--"  
  
"Oh, sweetheart," she says, and leans forward until she can touch his knee; she first pats it in a way that feels too condescending between them, now, and then just grips it.  "It won't come to that."  
  
"How do you know that?  They wanted to--"  
  
"Because," she says, and wonders if he's old enough to realize how wry this entire conversation is, "I think everyone is tired of fighting, Henry.  It has been... a very long time, for most of us."  
  
He looks at the hand on his knee, just for a second, and then covers it with his own hand.  
  
"You don't want to fight anymore."  
  
"No," she agrees, when it hits her that he's right.    
  
After a slight pause, he peers at her curiously.  "Are you _sure_ you don't really love Emma?  Because you're--you're just like you were before, when you did."  
  
A hoarse chuckle slips from her before she can stop it, and then she just pulls him into a hug, hands splayed across his shoulder blades until he squirms away from her and looks at her probingly.  
  
"Henry, this is hardly a conversation that a mother and a son should be having--"  
  
He rolls her eyes in a way that makes her want to wrap him up even tighter.  
  
"--and in any event, we all have... a lot on our minds right now.  The best we can do for Emma is be supportive and that requires giving her space.  This has been a very big change.  She doesn't ... she hasn't had the time to get used to everything that's happened."  
  
"Okay, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't feel stuff," Henry protests.  "And if she does--"  
  
After a second, Regina just presses a kiss to the top of his head.  "If she does, that is something for Emma and I to deal with; and on that note, it's time for bed."  
  
He grumbles a little, but gets under the covers all the same, swapping places with her, and yanks them up to his chin before letting go when she starts to smooth them over; truly, she knows he doesn't need any assistance, not anymore, but for now he seems content to indulge her and it makes it easier to head back to the other room, where Emma is silently drinking and Killian is flipping through the storybook, learning about a time and place he never lived in.


	6. Chapter 6

Emma heads out to the car with a mumbled excuse after another glass of scotch, and the door closes behind her with a soft click; it's no less final, however.  Regina sighs, before looking at Killian, running a thumbnail up and down a drawing of a red cape.  
  
It occurs to her abruptly that however strange it was to be paired off with Emma Swan, all those months ago, at least she'd _known_ Emma; had even permitted the girl to stay at her house, to access Henry, to be a part of the community they all lived in.  
  
"What did she do?  In this town, I mean," Killian asks, glancing up at her.  "Chef, still?"  
  
"Waitress."  
  
He has a reaction to it that she can't quite read; just a subtle twisting of his lips, and then he flips further along the book.  "This is--rather incomplete.  It's no wonder that your girl took a full year to suss out what was going on.  Rumpelstiltskin in particular is rather flatteringly done by here, wouldn't you say?"  
  
She scoffs, and heads over to where he's brushing aside the pages, before settling of a picture of Rumpel at his spinning wheel, coyly glancing at Belle dusting a few pieces of china on the other side of the room.  
  
"I suspect he's the author, so--"  
  
"He wrote a tale that any ten year old would devour whole; one's own mother, the root of all evil."  
  
Regina settles on the floor next to him, watches as Killian drags his index finger across Rumpel's neck, dark and silent.  "How far back does it go?  Your history with him."  
  
"Centuries," Killian says.  After a few more moments, he closes the book and lowers it to the floor next to him.  "Though it has been many, many lifetimes since I've even laid eyes on him."  
  
"The urge to get even passes all tests of time, I find."  
  
Killian pulls one of his knees up to his chest.  "You find?  Or you found?"  
  
She looks at him evenly, and after a moment he smiles in a way that's vaguely disarming.  
  
"Well, come on, Regina.  You were my employer for some years; my friend much longer.  I know what you look like when you're in love, darling, and you look it now.  Even if she can't see it, it's all over you.  It's all over you in the fact that you're _here_ , tail between your legs, ready to bow low for a group of people who you’d just as gladly see hung."  His tongue prods at the inside of his cheek for a second.  "Your mother would be bitterly disappointed by this turn of events, but I think it’s… rather sweet."  
  
Regina bites down on her lip to not say what she's thinking, before realizing that her expression is probably betraying her regardless.  Her only recovery lies in lashing out, and so she lifts her chin and says, "You and Red Riding Hood--was that real, or just passing entertainment?"  
  
Whatever desire he has to provoke her, to toy with her, recedes as he drops his chin to his knee.  "Who knows?  If her reaction this morning was anything to go by, though, there will not be an encore."  
  
"If she transformed, she has no control--"  
  
He waves her off.  "She didn't; not fully, anyway.  Her cape was nearby.  It's how I realized who she was."  
  
Their silence, while not as companionable as it once was, still feels thoroughly familiar, and she lets it soothe frayed nerves for a long moment.  
  
Killian licks at his lips and then sighs.  "This boundary--it's immutable?"  
  
"It has been since the original curse broke.  Even your nemesis could not figure out a way through it."  
  
A bitter smile works its way onto Killian's face.  "So--my choices are waiting, to see if he'll come back--or moving on with my life.  Here."  
  
"There are worse fates," she says, plainly.  
  
"I suppose you're right.  I'd miss the seas, but the stables..."  He closes his eyes, and then shrugs lightly.  
  
"We could run them again," she says, and then adds a dry, "Providing they don't plan to make examples out of us; though after the bloodshed of our last few days here, I highly doubt anyone will want to start pointing fingers."  
  
When he smiles at her, he's every bit the man she's known, and not at all the pirate, and she finds herself smiling back almost on instinct; however tired she is, and however much of her is preoccupied with the boy sleeping soundly in the room next door and the woman probably pacing holes in the forest ground outside, there is at least this: not everything she had before is lost to her.  
  
The moment doesn't last, however; eventually, Killian glances at his hookless hand and his jaw tightens almost immediately. "He might come back, you know."  
  
"Anyone might come back--"  
  
"If _anyone_ comes back, it's hardly cause for concern, hm?"  
  
Regina sighs deeply, and then says, "Give me your hand."  
  
"I would, but--"  
  
"The stump, dear."  
  
Killian hesitates, but only for a second; as if to say, _the hand's already gone, so do your worst._   Then, he extends his elbow, and Regina wraps both of her hands around the edge of his sleeve, covering black leather and scarred skin.  She closes her eyes, and ignores the shooting pains behind her eyes; the way that pressure builds in her brain, pounding away at her ears, and sucks in a deep breath as she feels the flesh start to mold.  
  
It takes an age; a lifetime.  She thinks of the ease with which Rumpelstiltskin could perform this kind of magic; wonders if her mother ever learned these particular skills, but doubts it.  Cora had never been interested in creating anything but status; everything else, she'd only excelled at destroying.  
  
Killian hands her a handkerchief when she's done; a cross-boned black little thing that she rolls her eyes at, but presses against her nose all the same.  
  
"You didn't have to," he says, lowly.  
  
"Consider it an attempt to remove obvious temptations," she says, squeezing fingers down over her nose until the bleed stops; when it does, she just dabs at her nose and balls up the handkerchief before handing it back.  
  
"It's not _temptation_ to question what he might do if he does return," Killian counters.  "Resisting him is not an option for any of us; at which point, we will be at his mercy, and merciful--"  Killian laughs shortly, as if the sentence isn't even worth finishing.  
  
Regina feels a chill run up her spine, but denies it whole.  "Pray tell, then, dear--what is so special about you and that pointy little stick you carry at your waist that means that you believe you _can_ slay the all-powerful Rumpelstiltskin?"  
  
“Nothing.  There's nothing special about this sword, but--mine is not the blade we'll need,” Killian says, the fire reflected in his eyes, giving them a stormy sheen.  “There is a cursed dagger.  I have no idea what it looks like, but it has his name on it.  It’s the only thing that can kill him.”  
  
“How do you--”  
  
“Your mother.”  After a second, Killian smiles falsely.  “An ambitious woman; willing to kill that which made her, and just about everything else at that.”  
  
She ignores his unsubtle taunt and instead raises her eyebrows at him.  “So where is this dagger?”  
  
Killian shrugs.  “I don't know."  
  
"That's spectacularly helpful, dear.  Truly."  
  
He takes the slight without reacting and slowly says, "If I were him, I’d hide it somewhere close to me.  Somewhere no one would look; where I could get to it quickly, if there was a need.”  
  
Regina sighs.  “I assume that means that he took it _with_ him--”  
  
“Ah; but it's a blade that comes with his curse.  Would it even have existed, in the new world?  A world without magic?  A world where he was only a man?” Killian asks, arching an eyebrow.  “I'd bet all my treasure that he'll come back for it, now.  He’ll come for it and then some.  Emma's spell was the only thing keeping his family by his side; and if they remember who he is--”  
  
“Belle is an _idiot,_ ” Regina says, emphatically enough for Killian to chuckle.  “That simpering nitwit will stay with him no matter what he does and call it love.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Killian says, lifting his new hand carefully, twisting it back and forth in the light of the fire.  “But his son fled to a different universe to escape him and his magic.  I highly doubt--”  
  
“How do you know all of this?” Regina demands.  
  
Killian lowers his hand to his lap again and shifts, the handcuffs jangling against the wall.  “I’ve lived for a very long time, darling, in a world that made it seem very short.  They call it--”  
  
“Neverland,” Regina says, and then manages a small, knowing smile when Killian glances at her.  “One of Henry’s favorites.  A story about children without mothers, so--”  
  
Killian rolls his eyes and gently kicks her in the thigh, and she’s reminded of late night studying in high school, late night drinking in college.  “Don't pity yourself; it doesn't become you.”  
  
“It's not pity,” Regina says, before looking towards the bedroom--and then looking towards the front door to the cabin.  "It's a simple fact.  For well over a year, he wished I wasn't in his life.”  
  
“Hm,” Killian sighs softly, tipping his head back against the wall.  “It was something, wasn’t it?”  
  
“What was?”  
  
“A year without consequences.  It was--”  
  
They sit together and stare at the flames as they lick higher and higher, until a horn sounds in the distance and the front door bursts open, Emma looking between them frantically.  
  
“What the hell was that?”  
  
Before Regina can say anything, Killian arches an eyebrow and says, “You’ve never heard a formal ceasefire sounded?”  
  
Emma stares at him uncomprehending.  “What, with a _trumpet?_ Uh--”  
  
“It’s the old way of things,” Regina says, before rolling her eyes lightly.  “George always was a stickler for tradition.”  
  
Emma’s mouth works silently for a second, and then she shakes her head.  “Christ.  What’s next, public executions for anyone found guilty of treason?”  
  
“Beheadings, presumably,” Killian says, raising an eyebrow.  “But I understand that we’re going to beg for mercy, now that we’re all ... redeeming ourselves.  Kat's a soft touch; she'll probably grant it.”  
  
Before Emma can respond, Regina gets back to her feet. “Ignore him.  It's a good sign; it'll make our ... surrender easier.”  
  
“Okay,” Emma finally says, as the panic in her eyes dies down again; abruptly, she looks younger than she is, a lost lamb in the wild.  “Do you want to take turns watching him?”  
  
“What did I ever do to you to deserve such mistrust,” Hook huffs, and Regina rolls her eyes.  
  
“He can’t go anywhere.  I’ve restrained him magically.”  
  
“Oh,” Emma says, with a quick glance to Regina’s hands.  “That’s... handy, I guess.”  
  
“Sometimes,” Regina agrees, hesitating briefly before saying, “If you’re having difficulty sleeping, I can--”  
  
“No.  No more drinking,” Emma says, and then wraps her hands around the doorframe, before glancing down at her feet.  “But maybe--we can go over what it is I should say tomorrow.  You know... well, you _know_ I’m really bad at speeches.”  
  
Her heart lurches without warning at the way that Emma cautiously peers up at her, but she swallows down any urge to read into the request and just nods.  “I’ll be right out.  Let me just check on Henry.”  
  
Emma directs one more dark look at Hook and heads back to her car, and Regina slowly pushes the bedroom door open, just far enough for Henry’s hair to be visible above the plain white top sheet.  It moves, barely but evenly, with his breathing, and she abruptly envies him for his ability to simply go along with all of this.  To treat it all as _adventure_ , which seems so much more bearable than _life_.  
  
When she closes the door again, Killian is staring at her.  “What?”  
  
“Think about what I said, about that dagger.  You wouldn’t want a blade like that to fall into the wrong hands, now would you?”  
  
If his voice sounds tight with reawakened obsession, it only has her pause for a moment.  
  
“We’ll alert Abigail to its existence and search for it, if she'll let us,” she finally says; and with that minor concession, Killian’s features relax.  
  
“Clever girl,” he murmurs, before closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the cabin wall, seemingly oblivious to how much he sounds like a woman he spent twenty eight years with, and just how those two words make Regina’s skin feel far too tight.  
  
…  
  
Emma's shut the headlights on the car off but has a flashlight in the trunk, and as it shines towards Regina as she steps outside, she closes her eyes and then covers them with a hand.  
  
"Sorry," Emma murmurs, from where she's sitting in front seat, legs out of the car and toes digging into the grass.  She lowers the flashlight to the dashboard and then just says, "The passenger door's open."  
  
By the time Regina's made her way around the car, Emma's swung her legs back inside of it and is staring out into the dark, hands folded in her lap.   
  
"It's weird," she says, as Regina gingerly sits down.  
  
"Which part?"  
  
"Just--you.  In this car.  I have--I mean, we've shared cars for..."  Emma starts to say, before hissing out the rest of her breath and tipping her head back against the headrest.  "There is no easy way to talk about all the fake stuff, is there."  
  
Regina leans out and pulls the door shut again, glancing at the floor of the car; it's littered with candy wrappers and folded-up maps and tissue paper, all things that she would've cured Emma of had any of the _fake stuff_ been real.  
  
"I was... surprised, to say the least, to not see this ... death trap in front of the house," she finally says, shifting until the springs in the seat stop digging into her thighs.  "You seem very attached to it.”  
  
"I was," Emma says.  After a second, she exhales in a soft whoosh.  "I guess--that's not the kind of thing we talk about, here, but it's not like you don't know, right?  Neal left me the car.  After dumping me in prison."  
  
Regina feels her face contort before she can stop it.  "Actually, I _didn't_ know that.  He--how exactly does one get dumped in prison, Emma?"  
  
Emma's hand strays absently up to the circular necklace she wears constantly in this world; Regina has no idea what's on it, but suddenly realizes that it, too, was gone in that other world.  "He set me up.  Or--I don't know, maybe he didn't set me up, but he abandoned me either way.  I got caught with some stolen watches.  I served out a ten month sentence, and when I was done, I... I had ... a car."  
  
"I'm..." Regina starts to say, before just biting on her lip and glancing at Emma from the corner of her eye.  
  
"Yeah, I know," Emma says, softly.  "Anyway.  It's--it's really in the past now.  Whatever I felt for him, once, I definitely don't anymore now.  I mean, maybe I'm just being naive, but the whole true love thing--it doesn't make sense if it's not exclusive."  
  
Regina smiles unwillingly.  "I dare say it doesn't make sense regardless."  
  
Emma takes a deep breath, only gradually letting it out again.   "No, you got that right."  
  
"In terms of what to say tomorrow--" Regina starts, but stops when Emma shifts abruptly next to her and then rubs at her face, fingers digging into the skin.  
  
"I don't--" she says, before clamping her lips together and wrapping her fingers around the steering wheel, clenching them until her knuckles turn white.  "I don't know how to just shut everything out the way I have to, right now.  The town needs me to--keep it all together and _explain,_ but everything's completely screwed up in my head and I don't know how to--"  
  
"I imagine that much as you've always done, you'll get it right in the moment."  
  
"Not when--I have to deal with Mary Margaret and David looking at me like they will once I start talking, and everyone else being pissed off because it's not like I _asked_ them if it was okay to do this, and then--"  Emma laughs shortly.  "And then there's you.  Looking at me like you love me.  I mean, how the hell am I supposed to calmly just talk about--that thing we did when you're standing there looking at me like that and all I can think is that--"  
  
The sentence trails off into nothing, as the moon casts down overhead, flickering through branches and leaving dark streaks on Emma's unnaturally pale face; and after a few moments of studying it quietly--while she can take the liberty--Regina says, "Think what, Emma?"  
  
"That..."  Emma swallows compulsively a few times, before her face screws up and her eyelashes flutter down; when they raise a few moments later, they're wet with tears.  "That that was the happiest I've ever been, and it's the happiest I'm ever going to be, and it just--it just went away like _that_.  You knew it was coming, but I didn't.  I was--so goddamned happy with you, Regina, and now--"  
  
When she reaches for Emma's thigh, it's the same kind of reflex that has Emma shifting towards her; months, if not years, of ingrained habits.  A level of comfort and trust that they, in this world, should not be able to exhibit towards each other at all, but Emma's right; it cannot simply be extinguished in the light of _fact_.  Fact and feeling have so very little to do with each other, and when Emma's right hand drops away from the wheel and clutches at Regina's own--tight, painfully tight, Henry-being-born tight--Regina holds her breath for a long moment.  
  
"We can't ever go back there, can we?" Emma asks, her voice rough with tears that she's refusing to shed.  
  
"No," Regina agrees, and after a second, Emma's fingers slip between her own, pressing down in places where rings would have cut off her circulation before, but there is nothing but skin now.  "I don't think we can."  
  
Emma runs her left arm across her face, mascara streaking her long-sleeved shirt, and then looks over; just looks, for a long moment.  
  
"I didn't get to say goodbye," she says, finally.  There's something pleading about both her face and her words, and Regina shifts to her left until her knee is pressing up against a gear shift, the hand brake digging into the flat of her forearm as Emma clings to her hand.  
  
"Emma, I promise you, I'm not going--"  
  
"I figured," Emma says, and manages a smile, trembling and half-hearted.  "But it's not the same.  You're--Regina Mills, but you're not--"  
  
"Regina Swan," she says.  
  
Emma stays completely still for a moment, merely lowering her eyes, and then raises their joined hands; brings them up to her face until Regina can no longer drown out the magic that's gently swirling around their fingers.  It's too good; too tempting, and when Emma lets go, her hand reaches the rest of the way without any further requests.  She brushes a strand of hair behind Emma's ear, pushing it in place with the tips of her fingers, before sliding her hand back down again and brushing her thumb right by the corner of Emma's mouth.  
  
"Are you sure--" she starts to say, when the look on Emma's face turns so painfully familiar; it's such an acute reminder of yesterday, the day before, the week before that.  It's a look that Emma should have never directed at her, but she can't seem to suppress it any more than Regina can stop her reaction to it.  Her knees bump up against plastic and metal and she ignores it; instead, she studies Emma's eyes, wondering how it can hurt so much that she can still read them so easily.  
  
"No," Emma says, closing those eyes just for a second.  "But I'm not sure about anything, Regina.  That's not gonna stop me from-- _doing_ things anyway, but I get that it's not the same for you.  That you're--sure.  That you're sure about ... me."  
  
Regina nods, not sure if Emma can handle hearing it out loud, and watches as Emma's eyes dart all over her face, until she flinches and looks away.  
  
"Sorry.  This is a shitty thing to do--"  
  
Regina leans forward, sweeping her hand behind Emma's neck and pulling her forward, and then presses their lips together, fragile and new and yet so very well-known.  She holds still, just feels Emma's chapped skin up against her own and then feels Emma's lips shift slightly, until they're actually kissing and not just pressing together in stasis.  A hand cups the back of her own head, tangling in hair there until she automatically tilts her head; body torqued and knees bruising, she forgets about everything but the way that her lips zing every time they brush against Emma's.  
  
She forgets everything except that for now, for the first time, this is _real_ \--and right when that thought registers, Emma lets go of a small sob that she swallows whole, before pulling away and pressing a few fleeting kisses on her forehead, her cheek, and then finally her lips again.  
  
"I don't know how to do this," Emma says, close enough that she feels the words more than hears them, and she lets out a soft shush and runs her fingers through Emma's hair, before kissing her a few more times.  The magic ebbs and flows, wraps around them until her racing heart feels utterly at peace, and she can feel Emma's heart start to pound louder as well.  
  
"You'll be fine," she says, pulling back to look at Emma's eyes, so dark and so lost.  "You will--"  
  
"I can't stop thinking about how it felt," Emma says, fingers going limp where they're wrapped around strands of Regina's hair.  "How--it felt, when it was still beating.  It was--"  
  
If she freezes, it's only in part because of the stricken look in Emma's eyes.  "What do you mean?"  
  
"It--was so dark, Regina.  Her heart, it was like--like trying to keep hold of an oil spill.  Everything about it was sick and wrong, except--" Emma says, before closing her eyes, squeezing them tightly shut.  "Except this one tiny spot of brightness.  That's all that was left; this one spot."  
  
Regina does what she can to not react in any way whatsoever.  She’s about to open her mouth to tell Emma to stop talking about this, but when Emma's hand shifts from where it's been cupping her upper arm and takes her hand, pressing her fingers against Emma's own sternum, she holds her breath instead.  
  
"It was you.  Your mother--God, she was a monster, but she loved you.  And I killed her," Emma says, dimly, as if the facts really are disconnecting from her.  "And now my own heart--"  
  
The way she flinches is inevitable.  "Emma--"  
  
"I mean, what is it like, now?  What is it--" Emma asks, her voice gaining a frantic pitch that makes Regina's insides feel like they're being wrung out.  "Is that what _I_ have become?  Was it my destiny to--to do all of these things, to end up just like her and--"  
  
"You're nothing like her," Regina says, with the kind of authority that had whole kingdoms kneeling for her once before; but Emma never has been impressed by status, her own or anyone else's.  
  
"You don't _know_ that.  You don't know--" Emma says, before swallowing thickly and staring at her with wide eyes.  Those same eyes drop to Regina's fingers a second later, where they're still being held hostage against Emma's upper chest, and then Emma moves them again.  They get dragged down in a near-straight line, until they shift to the right, and then she's--  
  
"What are you doing?" Regina voices, a whisper of a question, when it's clear that Emma isn't encouraging her to cop a feel; not with that much darkness and misery swirling around her eyes.  
  
"Tell me.   You can-- _tell me_ that it's not like that.  That I haven't turned into--"  
  
"Oh my God," Regina finds herself saying, but when Emma's fingers press into the back of her hand more firmly, curling and clawing, she watches with acute horror as her own hand starts to slip inside of Emma's shirt without her permission--just the tips of her fingernails, long again, but they sink in smooth as a knife slicing through melting butter.  "Emma, what are you--"  
  
Emma pushes down, hard, and then she's there; cupping a heart that's so clean and so pure, just coated with the slightest dusting of gray speckles, that her breath catches in her throat.  The light seeps into her; molds a cast around her own heart, covers it whole and brightens it and makes her feel young again, like a girl who just wanted to ride, wanted a mother who loved her, wanted so many things without knowing they were always out of reach.  
  
Emma's hand falls away limp, and a small, helpless noise escapes from her as she stares at Regina's wrist, protuding from her shirt in a way that it shouldn't be able to.  She stares, and whimpers when Regina starts to pull back, slowly and evenly, letting go of the single most profound thing she's ever touched.  It almost takes more willpower than she has, but looking at Emma's face--the abject terror on it, the mystified disbelief at what magic can do--she finds the strength to relinquish the power that Emma's heart contains.  
  
When her fingers are fully out, she gasps for air and presses those same fingers to her own heart; wondering what they look like to Emma.  If Emma can see them glow, or if that requires training that Emma will never want to receive.  
  
When she looks up, willing herself to breathe evenly, Emma is staring at her with glistening eyes, a silent question on her lips.  
  
"You're... disgustingly beautiful.  It shouldn't be possible, to be so--" Regina starts to say, before stopping and curling her hand into a fist; a fist that she lowers to her lap in surrender.  "Out of all the hearts I've ever held--"  
  
Something pained passes over Emma's face at that half-expressed sentiment.  "I bet that one's straight from the evil queen book of pick-up lines, huh?"  
  
Regina has no idea how to respond; she shifts back towards the door, until a hand on her arm stops her, and Emma tugs on her blouse just long enough for her to look back over.  
  
"I'm sorry.  Bad joke."  
  
"It's not--well, my God, it's not as if it's undeserved," she says, with a deep sigh.  The hand that just was buried inside of Emma's chest runs through her hair, shakily, and then she stares out the window, towards the dark woods ahead.  A place for lost souls, those woods.  It's only fitting they're in them now.  "Regina Swan was... a good woman,  but we both know that I will never be--"  
  
"You can try to be one.  Now.  _Again_."  
  
"And will that be enough?" Regina asks, prodding at her lip with her tongue; she can still taste Emma, and wonders how long until she can't anymore.  Until Emma becomes nothing more than yet another memory, in that sense.  "Will you ever be able to--"  
  
Emma sighs deeply, somehow making herself very small.  "Ask me something easier."  
  
It takes her a few minutes; a few minutes to come up with an easy question that Emma will probably be able to answer, because all she has is big questions and undesirable questions.  After minutes of pushing those back, of trying for the patience that she promised not a full day ago, she finally looks over and manages a small smile.  "Why not Emma Mills?"  
  
The car is quiet for another substantial stretch of time, until Emma says, "I don't know.  I guess because... even though you were going to remember, I guess I wanted to give you a chance to be someone..."  
  
She trails off and reaches for Regina's hand across the console; grips it tight for a long moment, magic pulling taut between them once more, soothing them both until Emma drifts off into a light slumber and Regina listens to the sounds of the forest, birds and rodents and wind tickling leaves in a way that reminds her of the rides she used to take around Leopold's castle as a young bride-to-be.   
  
It's only when the sun comes up and a bird lands on the hood of the Bug, chirping loudly at them, that Emma shifts again, before slowly taking her hand back and popping the car door open.  
  
Her "thanks" is almost voiceless, but it covers every emotion that passes over Emma's face in that one last look over her shoulder before she gets out of the car.  
  
If there wasn't time for a goodbye before, Emma squeezes one into the twenty or so steps she takes back to the cabin; a whole twenty steps to leave a life behind.


	7. Chapter 7

just to let you all know that I was in a near fatal car accident last Thursday and will not be capable of or in the right mood to work on this story for the foreseeable future. current best guess for when broken bones stop being my whole life is 2 months away. I hope you'll be patient until then. many apologies for still not being done with this story, and thanks for your continued interest

\- maleficently


	8. Chapter 8

2.  
   
 _And we dance_  
 _And we sing_  
 _And we're all monkeys in a long line of kings_  
Matthew Good, "While We Were Hunting Rabbits"  
  
 _..._  
  
 _Eight Weeks Prior_  
   
...  
   
   
"Is Emma going to be okay?" Henry asks. He's actually holding on to her hand for dear life as he asks it; she struggles not to remember times when he was much younger and such gestures were automatic, not inspired by fear or a lack of alternative options.  
   
Honesty first, Regina thinks, and gives him a small squeeze as they head up the path together. "I'm... not sure. I don't think--"  
   
"Did you know she could do that?"  
   
God, children and their questions. "No," she admits. "I didn't know she could... I don't think _she_ knew she could do that."  
   
 _That_ seems like a rather insufficient way of describing the block-wide blackout that Emma had caused just by losing control of her temper about thirty minutes prior. Better words aren't coming to mind, however, and the look on Emma's face after her parents stormed out of the annex to the mayoral office, Snow in tears and James visibly distraught, had strongly suggested that asking for an explanation would not be welcomed.  
   
Emma unlocks the door and heads straight for the study--and the liquor kept warm there--and, several paces behind her, Henry is clinging to his other mother's hand and asking her, silently, to make this better.  
   
"She's very..." Regina starts, a little helplessly, as they enter the house. Pieces of chandelier still litter the foyer floor, and as Henry starts to take off his shoes, she stops him with a hand on his shoulder. "No. Keep them on for now, until we've swept up all this glass. Okay?"  
   
He nods, silent and obedient as his other-world counterpart had also always been, and hesitates in the middle of the foyer as he glances into the study. The ringing of glass hitting glass sounds from there, and after a moment, Regina runs a hand through his hair and says, "I'll make pizza. How does that sound?"  
   
"I'm not hungry," he counters, watching as Emma throws back her first drink and then clenches her hand around the glass before sniffing loudly and heading to the window.  
   
"We have to eat, Henry. So--pizza?" she asks, and eventually, feels him nod. "Okay. Why don't you go upstairs and shower, sweetheart. I'll talk to Emma, and see if--"  
   
"I didn't know she was that angry," Henry cuts her off, in barely more than a whisper. "I just thought--I thought that because she saved everyone and finally got her parents back, she'd be happy."  
   
It's more than he should be aware of; much more than he needs to shoulder. Regina closes her eyes and then presses a kiss to the crown of his head. "You made her happy, Henry. Believe me. No matter what else you heard tonight, you have always made her happy."  
   
After a second, he slips out of her arms and heads up the stairs, one dirty footprint at a time, but he doesn't protest the idea. Watching him go, she gathers herself as much as she can before joining Emma in the study. She stays silent, for now; just heads to the mini-bar and pours herself a glass of scotch. It smells warm and sweet, even if it isn't; it reminds her of the way Emma--  
   
"That went well," Emma says flatly, behind her.  
   
Regina holds her breath for a few seconds, wondering what will happen if she doesn't give Emma the argument she probably wants right now, and is rewarded with a deep sigh from the other side of the room, as well as a soft _thunk_ when Emma's head lands against the window.  
   
"Pretty sure she hates me for what I did."  
   
Regina's eye roll is mostly automatic, but no less sincere for it. "I highly doubt that."  
   
"You didn't see the look on her face when--God, I don't know," Emma mumbles, taking another sip from her drink and closing her eyes. "All she said was that she had to go see Leo. You know, the child that didn't totally screw her. And she doesn't even know the worst of it yet."  
   
"The worst of--" Regina says, thinking of her mother casually sitting down in the foyer: _kill me now, don't kill me, do whatever you like, darling. I'm all yours. Mother loves you._  
   
"Yeah," Emma says. When she looks over, there's something dark and familiar in her eyes. "You know. You and me."  
   
It's neither rude nor an awakening, which doesn't explain why she stupidly freezes with her own drink halfway to her mouth. "Ah," she says, when Emma keeps staring at her. "Well. There isn't anything to really _say_ on that front, is there. I wouldn't worry about it."  
   
"There isn't?" Emma asks, pointed.  
   
"Love can be obsessive, but it's not compulsive," Regina says, shrugging lightly and walking over to the couch, sitting down as casually as she can. "Unless you decide that you wish to pursue--" She hesitates, unsure what to call it. Gesturing between them is a rather crude way to imply a relationship, but it's the best she can do, on the spot like this.  
   
"Decide," Emma repeats. The corner of her mouth curves sharply. "At last--a choice, huh."  
   
Regina says nothing for a moment; just gazes back evenly, until Emma averts her eyes.  
   
"Sorry. It's not--I know you actually get it. I'm just--"  
   
"It's all right," Regina says, even though it blatantly isn't. Three days ago, a horrible day like this one would have ended with them curled around each other in bed, simmering in the combined effects of their magic, not even needing words because words couldn't have added anything to the plain truths they knew about each other.  
   
This is akin to the deaf leading the blind; Emma who doesn't want to see, and she herself who can't bear to hear.  
   
"This amnesty," Emma eventually says, as the water overhead turns on. "Was it your idea?"  
   
"No," Regina says, swirling the last few sips of liquid around in her glass. She kicks off her heels and sighs. "It was Abigail's, obviously. She'll be a more magnanimous ruler than any of the rest of us have ever been or wanted to be. An amnesty does make sense, though, in that what caused a volatile situation to spark last time was--your mother's--"  
   
"Don't call her that," Emma says, darkly.  
   
Regina blinks, but God, it's no skin off her back. " _Snow White's_ idiotic idea of punishing anyone she perceived to have committed one sin or another. Pride is a powerful instigator. I'd say most of us have too much of it by far, but Kat... no, she's always been remarkably level-headed. More concerned with the common good than her own."  
   
"She'll be twice the mayor I ever was," Emma says, before letting out a soft scoff. "Not that that was anything other than my imagination running wild anyway..."  
   
"Emma--"  
   
"No, it's fine. I'm just--" Emma says, shortly. She pushes away from the window and heads back to the rapidly depleting decanter full of Regina's favorite scotch and pours herself some more, a simple liberty in a house that must feel like she belongs in it even if she's only there because she has nowhere else to go, right now. "So we're not going to be punished," she says, as the liquid trickles into the glass.  
   
"You're not going to be exiled. She wouldn't hear of it. And... I simply can't be exiled. We have no idea what would happen to me if I were to cross the boundary now."  
   
Emma's mouth contorts. "You know, I always figured you could come and go because it's your curse, but--"  
   
"I didn't create the curse, and in any event, this isn't how the boundary worked before. If others forget their true selves in passing through it, that means I could forget _everything._ However, I might retain magical ability even with full amnesia, which would make me--"  
   
"Dangerous," Emma says. It comes out flat and knowing. "Yeah, I get it. It still means that we just get away with it. We screwed with--everyone's lives all over again; I _killed_ your mother, and we just get away with it."  
   
"What would you have them do, Emma?" Regina asks, wondering if she sounds as exasperated as she feels. "If you wish to be banished, then banish yourself. There isn't anything stopping you from leaving town; well, not yet, anyway. I believe we'll be placed under guard tomorrow, however, as George did not seem keen on simply letting us... wander."  
   
Emma's expression grows tight, and it's with the barest of glances to the ceiling that Regina realizes what is stopping her from doing something drastic. "You know I can't leave town right now. Not while this amnesty is still up in the air. If Albert and his people change their minds and want to do more than just... lock us up in here, or whatever this is--"  
   
"I doubt they will. They'll forget about what we did; or perhaps not forget, but it'll stop being a pressing concern," Regina says. Her ankles hurt as much as her head does; too little sleep, too much casting in short succession. She's out of practice, rusty, old. She's nothing like the very alive woman she's been for a full year now. "It's not as if it was anger with _me_ that precipitated the disastrous events that led to us casting that spell. I was no more than an afterthought by the time George staged his little coup."  
   
Emma nurses her drink quietly for a few moments and sits down in the chair opposite, looking at Regina without blinking until Regina actually thinks she might start to squirm.  
   
"I want to help find this dagger, so you guys are ready for Rumpelstiltskin if he ever comes back, but after that, if everything settles down..." Emma starts to say, before looking down at her glass. "I'm not staying. And I'd appreciate it if you'd let me go, because I know what you're like--"  
   
Regina actually laughs, surprising herself as much as she clearly startles Emma. The laughter peters out as quickly as it comes on, at which point she says, "Go on."  
   
"Giving up isn't really... it's not really what you do, but I'm going to ask you to. I'm not leaving because of _you_ , Regina. I just don't know how to be here anymore. It's my whole life. I just--I don't know how to do this, how to be what everyone wants me to be. It's not who I _am_. Things with you are... I don't know, but I do know that I'm not going to be worth a damn to Henry if I don't--" Emma's lip slips between her teeth, and they bite down firmly, leaving little imprints before she sighs. "I just need to be gone. Do you get that, at all?"  
   
Regina watches her face contort in the dim early evening light, the sun just about setting on the apple tree in the back yard, and manages something that's as close to a smile as she'll get. "Wanting to escape my own life for a while, or... say, twenty eight years? No, I can't possibly imagine what that's like."  
   
It works. Even with reality discoloring every single one of Emma's emotions right now, that little sliver of knowing cuts through to the heart of her, and she smiles in a way that's a little bittersweet, before laughing softly and ducking her chin to her chest. "Right."  
   
They don't say more; a lot goes unspoken in the downright pleasant silence that follows. Emma doesn't murmur the _thanks_ that her lingering, small smile implies, and Regina declines the urge to sink to her knees and crawl across an impeccably clean white rug until she can beg Emma to give them a real chance.  
   
There is no point in ignoring Emma's simple request to be let go; there is no _them_ without a whole Emma, after all, and Emma isn't whole right now. It's painfully obvious to her, even if Emma will keep it together for however long she has to--as she always has done--and Regina doubts that anyone else in Storybrooke will notice.  
   
Silently, they sit in the lingering comfort that they can't seem to eradicate even while they're keeping their distance. It lingers even while she's on some sort of unspoken probation; already halfway rejected, however _not personal_ Emma claims it is.  
   
When her drink is finished, Regina gets to her feet again--bare, once more--and says, "It will be a struggle to convince Henry to eat if you decline dinner."  
   
Emma sighs softly. After another second, she puts her empty glass down on the table--no coaster, which is one of those things that Regina will be letting go from now on--and gets up as well. "Pizza, huh?"  
   
"It's been a long day."  
   
Emma studies her, hands in her back pockets, and finally just rolls her eyes. "I'll have a slice. I can't promise more than--"  
   
"It'll do," Regina says, and wonders what it will take for Emma to actually stop trying. Even now, so close to the bone, she simply doesn't seem to have it in her to quit.  
   
...  
   
She doesn't sleep much, that night.  
   
Her ears are primed for noises from elsewhere in the house; a room that's been empty for the better part of a year, but where Emma now lies, presumably also staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. It's nearly three when Regina gives up and slips out from under the too-cold, too-heavy covers, and pulls on a loose sweater and a pair of linen slacks and heads downstairs.  
   
She's barely there for ten minutes, watching the coffee maker brew, when she nearly jumps out of her skin as Emma says, "Can't sleep either, huh?"  
   
As Emma shifts into view, Regina fights the urge to press a hand to her heart. For God's sake, she's not _Snow White_. Instead, she musters up a half-hearted glare and Emma responds with a half-hearted smile, before heading to the coffee maker and pouring them both a mug. The amount of sugar that goes into the one on the right is enough to make Regina's teeth sing in sympathy, but something inside of her settles at the familiar sight of Emma stirring so hard that some of the coffee sloshes over the side of the mug and splatters onto the countertop.  
   
Routine will be all they have, for now. It will be interrupted all too soon; their first chaperone is bound to arrive later in the day, and she knows Emma well enough to realize that with the chaperone will come an insurmountable distance. Alone, it's possible they can be approximations of themselves; but with company, Emma will feel compelled to behave as the savior that everyone wants her to be.  
   
The savior doesn't offer coffee to the queen with a soft, "Here you go"; doesn't sit down across from her and blow on her own mug of coffee, and doesn't look over with tired, bruised eyes before offering another small smile--the kind of smile that says, _I don't know what else to do, either_.  
   
"What did Kathryn say about Killian's dagger?" she asks, after some silence.  
   
It's not a conversation the two of them managed to have last night. Not while Henry was around, looking at Emma with a mixture of concern and trepidation; a subtle knife, that kind of look. Regina knows it well. Emma had forced herself to make small talk over that singular slice of pizza, and they'd put on _Iron Man 2_ to watch with Henry, who had quietly and stiffly seated himself between them before ultimately curling up against Emma, as if pinning her in place and reminding her of what she threatened to leave behind a day earlier.  
   
The pain that lanced through Emma's eyes when he'd pressed his head against her upper arm had been unwatchable for the few seconds that it had lasted; the way Emma had steeled herself, running her fingers through Henry's hair for only a moment and then closing off her expression altogether, had been worse, somehow.  
   
Regina closes her eyes at the memory, and lets the hot mug sear her fingers for a few seconds before saying, "She wants us to look for it."  
   
"I thought we were grounded," Emma says, wryly. Still, there's something about her tone of voice that suggests that the idea rankles her. It's one of so very few differences left between them, even now: Emma has never let herself be trapped and Regina has hardly known a free existence.  
   
It's strange, how little that seems to matter now that she's stuck in the only place she'd want to be.  
   
"We are. We'll be released into the Sheriff Department's custody for the purposes of ... town security, or some such thing."  
   
"The Sheriff's--" Emma repeats, sinking back into her chair. "You mean David."  
   
It hadn't actually occurred to Regina, but it seems probable; Mulan is too busy actually _being_ the Sheriff to go gallivanting all around town in search of a dagger that might not actually exist. Whatever it is that David's task in the department is, it's doubtful that he can't be spared.  
   
She opens her mouth to ask if that will be _okay_ for Emma, and then closes it again; that level of condescension is unbecoming, and so she just quietly takes a sip, nerves soothing over for a second as the liquid bubbles hotly down her throat.  
   
"If you'd rather not... I believe Abigail could use an administrative assistant or two," she says, when Emma stares at the floor for a few too many moments. "She indicated that.... well, as I resigned rather abruptly, all records of tax collection from the last fiscal year are incomplete."  
   
Emma's eyebrows draw together after a second. "And here I was, thinking that she didn't know crap about punishing people. Municipal accounting is probably what makes up the third circle of hell."  
   
Regina smiles faintly, just for a moment. She considers taking a risk; over-stepping boundaries that were only reintroduced yesterday. It's hard to forget that a few days ago, even, the turmoil playing over Emma's face would've resulted in a conversation. It's hard to forget that she knows everything about Emma's imagined parents through Emma, and even harder to forget, now, that she knows more of Emma's actual parents than Emma herself does. Still, it isn't her place, and so she dispels the urge to reach out more than she already has.  
   
Emma spooks easily; she's already one foot out of the town, only obligation and a deeper longing to do right by Henry keeping her where she is. She doesn't need--  
   
"I don't think he's as pissed at me as Mary Margaret is. But then I guess I just don't really know him. Maybe he's really angry and just--not the kind of guy who shows it."  
   
"Oh, your father has about as much temper control as you do. He's easily provoked, but also..." Regina hesitates, but when Emma looks over at her with a suppressed curiosity in her eyes, she just rolls her eyes faintly. "He's soft. Softer than your mother ever was, even as a girl."  
   
Emma's fingers tighten around the mug, and she takes a shaky sip before saying, "I guess I never really thought about how long you've known her for."  
   
"It's hard to say if I actually know her at all. Truly, she hardly knows _me_. It's ... ancient history," Regina says, crossing her legs and looking out the kitchen window, at where the first birds are already beginning to stir and the sun will start to rise not too long from now. "The one thing I will say with certainty is that they will both get over what you did. For God's sake, even after I'd tried to kill them both several times, your mother still insisted on forgiving me--and whatever loyalty she felt for me then obviously pales compared to what love she feels for you."  
   
"Love," Emma says, softly. After a second, she scoffs and shakes her head. "Yeah."  
   
Regina tilts her head slightly. "Are you saying you doubt--"  
   
"No. I know that they love me. Or--that they think they do. It just doesn't really count for anything if they don't act on it, you know? I mean, I've loved Henry his entire life, but what good has that done him? I wasn't _here_." Emma takes another sip and bitterly adds, "Talking about love is a hell of a lot easier than actually living up to it."  
   
For a few seconds, all Regina can do is watch as Emma's expression tightens before it slowly starts to relax again, as if she's forcing herself to let go of all the things she should have had growing up and will never recover. _Love is weakness,_ her mother hisses somewhere in the back of her mind, but when Emma looks over at her again, that voice has never been easier to dismiss altogether.  
   
"It isn't easy," she agrees, as a bird lands on the window sill and chirps at them both. "It's ... the hardest thing of all. But there is very little reason for living without it. I think I know that better than most."  
   
Emma's eyes lower. "I'm not really in a place where--I can be anything to anyone right now, Regina. If I'm honest, I haven't been for months now. Real months, I mean. I know that that probably just sounds like a cop-out--"  
   
"It doesn't," Regina says, unable to stop from being this generous when Emma looks so pained. "And for what it's worth, I believe that Henry will understand, providing you don't pull out of his life altogether."  
   
" _Never_ ," Emma says, sharply enough for her to stop talking. "God, I could never--you have to know that I'd do anything for that kid. Anything at all. I just can't be what he needs me to be; not here."  
   
The clock on the oven switches to 04:00 and Regina finishes the last of her coffee. "I meant what I said."  
   
"What you said--" Emma echoes, frowning at her in a way that's painfully familiar; she's always been slow to start in the mornings, and lately, that's been the kind of thing that should irritate Regina but merely makes her want to forget about her own obligations and laze about the house longer.  
   
"You would have done right by him, had you been... allowed to keep him," she says.  
   
Emma swallows audibly, lips clamping shut, and just stares at her.  
   
"I know you'll continue doing right by him now, and we'll make whatever arrangements we need for you to be a part of his life. So. If you have any thoughts on where we can possibly find this dagger..."  
   
"How does someone like you do the kind of things that _she_ did?" Emma blurts out; the words chime accusingly in the nearly-empty kitchen, and Regina freezes at them completely. The shock must show on her face, because Emma bits her lip hard enough for the skin around her teeth to whiten, and finally says, "Sorry--I'm sorry, that's not what--"  
   
"You know how it feels to love completely, now," Regina says, before taking a deep breath and pushing away from the table. "Now imagine knowing with absolute certainty that you will never feel that way again, and tell me that it wouldn't make you capable of doing _anything_. Imagine losing Henry, and tell me that--"  
   
"Do you regret what you did? At all?" Emma cuts her off, still sounding so hopeful in the face of something that defies rational explanation.  
   
Regina pauses as she gathers their empty mugs; perhaps for just a second too long, because the hope fades from Emma's face before she responds.  
   
"Had any of it happened differently, there is no telling that Henry would have ever been born. I don't know _how_ to regret having done any of it when ultimately, it brought me our son." She turns to the sink and adds, "It's tempting to fantasize about a life where endurance and forgiveness and patience would have brought me Henry anyway, but there's so very little point in it. Had I not cast the curse, I would have been an old woman by the time Henry had ever been born; and who is to say he would have been at all? You would have never met--"  
   
"Neal," Emma says, sounding abruptly nauseous. "Oh, God, I completely forgot about Neal."  
   
"This is not what you'll want to hear, but you and Henry will always be worth all of it. I can't apologize for that; I _won't_. And if that means that you can't--that in your eyes, I'm still the Evil Queen--"  
   
"I didn't say that," Emma says, and as Regina finishes rinsing the mugs out, Emma gets up from the table as well and heads over to the counter, looking out at the blooming apple tree. "I... It's not that simple. I don't know what that means. I don't feel like I know _anything_ right now."  
   
"It's a lot to take in. Your own life, let alone mine," Regina says, turning the tap off and leaning against the counter as well, as Emma's eyes follow a slowly drifting blossom down to the ground. "And I suppose there are some cultural differences to take into account. Murder, after all, is rather common where we're from--but I expect that it's harder for you to accept--"  
   
"Yeah, it's not really something that people just _do_ , here," Emma says. Her mouth twists before she adds, "Present company excluded, I guess."  
   
Regina hesitates for only a few seconds, but cautiously puts a hand on Emma's shoulder, holding back on any magic she might accidentally send across; it's just a hand, anchoring her to the here and now, because this isn't the time for either of them to start drifting into memories of what they've done before.  
   
"I have done terrible things. I will _not_ do them again," she says, after a few seconds of studying Emma's profile silently; the way that her hair is looking lank and more unruly than naturally curly, and the way that the shadows under her eyes are deepening with every passing minute. Even like this, exhausted and grappling for the strength to keep going, she is so undeniably beautiful that Regina can't help but stare. "It's the best I can do at this point, Emma. It's the best any of us can do."  
   
Emma eventually nods, and glances at her for just a second before stepping back and heading for the stairs again. "Yeah. I guess it is."  
   



	9. Chapter 9

When the knock on the door to the study sounds, she looks up from the map of the town she's been looking at and leans back in her chair. It's ingrained behavior, automatic after so many years of staring down the citizenry from the high horse that was her office. Never mind that she's now just in a room in her own house; a house she can't--or _shouldn't_ , if she's being completely honest about the extent to which they can actually be guarded--leave.  
   
She remembers when this _was_ her town as if it still is; and, wholly unintentionally, Emma helps perpetuate that illusion, by not waiting for a response and just barging into the room in a red leather jacket and a pair of skin-tight jeans, black boots with scuffed toes completing a bittersweet, familiar combination.  
   
"They're here," she says, heading to the desk and glancing at the map and then putting a finger down on one of the crosses that Regina has eked out in the forest. "That's... a lot of locations to check."  
   
"They?" Regina asks, taking off her reading glasses and lowering them to her lap.  
   
"You were right. It's David who brought Hook," Emma says, staring down at her feet. "He says our first guard will be there when we get back. Frederick volunteered."  
   
Regina is already midway through an eye-roll when Emma pulls a strand of hair behind her ear and sighs deeply.  
   
"This is totally a setup. David's going to want to talk about what we did some more." Emma's lips purse, briefly. She shakes her head, glancing at Regina again. "I wish Kathryn had just told me to get out of town."  
   
Regina gets to her feet, slowly, and lowers her glasses to the desk. By the time she's made it around to where Emma is standing, tracing lines from one cross to the next, she's tucked her hands into the pockets of her blazer. It's one of very few things that will actually stop her from touching Emma, who has very much not wanted to be touched since their little trip to the city hall. "James won't talk in company. Not around me, in any event. I can run interference if you wish."  
   
"It's fine. I guess this is the icing on the cake; a sweet little guilt trip to really drive home that we did a bad thing." A muscle near Emma's jaw tics, but Regina is getting unexpectedly good at reading the warning signs that precede a magic overload, and this isn't it; this is simpler, basic emotion. "It'll all be about how much I hurt Mary Margaret's feelings. Or he'll just say he's sorry some more. He'll probably also tell me again that I did the right thing because it saved a bunch of lives--"  
   
"Well, I don't disagree with him there," Regina says, watching as Emma's finger circles the x right on top of the pawn shop absently.  
   
Emma glances at her before producing a self-deprecating scoff. "That's easy for you to say. I didn't choose to forget about you."  
   
"You chose to forget little things about all of us, dear. Even Henry. I don't think he's picked a pair of dirty socks off the floor in his life, but last year..."  
   
A flicker of regret passes over Emma's face. Genuine as it is here, in the realization that she'd accidentally perfected her otherwise fallible child, it can't have been when she told her parents that she had regrets. She doesn't; that much, the other Emma had made clear before they'd fallen victim to the inevitable end of their happiness.  
   
"Anyway," Emma sighs, picking up the map and haphazardly folding it. "We better go. The sooner we find this dagger, the sooner--"  
   
She doesn't finish the sentence, but it's clear. If they hadn't agreed to abide by the house arrest, Regina's sure that Emma would have spent last night wandering over to the boundary just to remind herself of how good it will feel once she finally gets to escape.  
  
"After you," Regina forces herself to say when Emma's eyes grow too distant for comfort; as if all the futures she sees for herself are somewhere far away from here, no matter what happens next.  
   
...  
   
She exchanges a quick kiss on the cheek with Killian as she settles in the back of the cruiser with him. Emma slumps into the seat next to her father, like a teenager out on bail after getting caught at a house party with alcohol. She mumbles a "Hey" before sliding on a pair of sunglasses that Regina doesn't recall ever seeing before, and even with them on, turns her head to look out the window rather than at her father.  
   
James soaks Emma up. He plainly studies at her for a long moment, opens his mouth as if he wants to start up a conversation of sorts, but then changes his mind as Emma's mouth sets and her fingers start to tap out an irregular beat on her thighs.  
   
Regina feels a stab of unwanted sympathy for the man--parenting, after all, is a minefield even when doing right by one's children doesn't require tremendous sacrifice--and dismisses it by looking Killian. "I have some ideas of where to look, but as this is your idea..."  
   
Killian manages a faint smile, and in a pair of jeans, a black button-down shirt and cowboy boots, he's back to being the wrangler, her best friend. Like this, he's a man she trusts on sight, however unwise that may be given who he really is. "I thought we'd try the obvious first. His home; perhaps his place of employment. What is it he does here, anyway?"  
   
"He ran a pawn shop," James says, pulling away from the curb. "Where my pet store used to be."  
   
"Ah," Killian says, before shooting Regina a look that screams, _am I not supposed to talk about this?_ She smothers a chuckle and watches as Emma plays with her own fingers in the front seat, staring at her hands as if they contain the secrets to life.  
   
"Well. Let's start with his home. I imagine that he won't simply have it in a display case, but who knows what we'll find," Killian says, with a shrug.  
   
"You're absolutely positive this dagger exists?" Emma asks, head tilting towards the rear view mirror.  
   
Killian opens his mouth, but closes it again on a soft _hmm_. "Well--no, I'm not. Cora was a rather magnificent liar, darling, but--on the positive side, I fail to see what she would gain from telling me that an item such as this existed. She had her own reasons for wanting Rumpelstiltskin gone. She didn't exactly confide in me what those were--"  
   
"A broken deal. One he would've made her regret eventually," Regina says, looking out the window.

The town, barely two days after they all regained consciousness, already looks to be running itself again. At eight, Alice had stopped by and nervously asked if Henry needed someone to walk him to school; Emma had looked flabbergasted at the idea that this Tuesday, like so many others, was going to be a school day, but life simply must go on. The diner will be serving lunch and dinner as it has for thirty years now, and anyone not needed on this little mission or at the town hall will be clinging to their routines of yore.  
   
At the town hall, Abby and George will be nailing down the final details of the amnesty agreement and will afterwards be commencing work on the new town code, with laws that suit the Storybrooke population rather than this world.  She supposes she'll be consulted on those laws as well; Abigail won't have anyone else trustworthy to ask about magic, however ludicrous it seems that the honor should fall to her. Still, she's made sincere promises to not abuse her powers, where Jafar and Blue are equally likely to press an advantage if they discover one during the legislative process.  
   
"Okay. We try the house first," Emma says, slicing neatly through concerns that aren't technically Regina's to have yet. She blinks and then watches Emma raise her eyebrows at Killian. "Do you have any idea about what the dagger looks like?"  
   
"Alas," Killian says, scratching at his neck. "All I know is that it is in fact a dagger, if it exists, and it has his name on it. I suppose we'll know it when we see it."  
   
James stays quiet and Emma scans the horizon silently as they drive through town, circumventing Main Street altogether and--in no time at all--pulling up on a house in the cul-de-sac that Rumpel has made his own for the last thirty years. His home is deceptively plain, but very secluded; with a back yard that stretches into the woods proper. The exterior color scheme alone is in desperate need of a woman's touch; one that Regina deprived Rumpelstiltskin of for a great many years.  
   
It's _deeply_ regrettable, of course. Belle always did have a penchant for reds and blues; primary colors that would have truly brightened the place.  
   
"All right," Emma says, once they've all stepped out of the car. They make an odd little barricade of people, a crooked line facing down an unfamiliar challenge. "Do you think we can just go in, or--"  
   
"I'm sure he has some sort of security system set up," James says, folding his arms across his chest. "If it's a normal alarm, we can call it in to Sleepy and he should be able to turn it off remotely or here, with the code. If it's anything else--"  
   
Emma turns to look at Regina. "Can you do some magic-fu to find out?"  
   
"Stand back," Regina says, not surprised when James and Killian immediately skitter backwards. It's amazing how the unfamiliar inspires endless fear in everyone she knows; everyone except Henry, of course, who would probably just stand by her side, pulling on her sleeve, asking her what she's about to do.  
   
She smiles faintly at the thought and then almost jumps out of her skin when Emma moves into the space Killian has just vacated. At this gesture of ... well, she's not sure what to call it, but it's there, and her pulse zings like Emma has snagged on a trip-wire.  
   
"What is it?"  
   
"Nothing, I just--" Emma says, raising her eyebrows and holding her hand out. "I thought--"  
   
"Ah," Regina says. She considers protesting, but God, it's too tempting. Touching Emma will always be tempting, and it's simply irresistible when Emma actually welcomes it; when she doesn't have see the hesitation in Emma's eyes, even, because sunglasses are shielding her expression.  
   
As soon as her fingers furl around Emma's, James stammers, "What are you--Emma, what she's about to do might be dangerous, don't--"  
   
"She won't hurt me."  
   
"Maybe not on purpose," James concedes, which is rather magnanimous of him, "but things can go wrong with magic. Don't you remember what happened with the portal?"  
   
"James, I assure you, the only thing that Emma touching me will do is stabilize my magic with her own," Regina says, not bothering to turn around. "We'll be safer this way."  
   
Silence stretches out for a few moments, but as soon as she's closed her eyes and has put out her hand, feeling around for any invisible magical barriers, a next wary question follows.  
   
"How--do you know that that's what it does?"  
   
Emma freezes, and Regina lowers her hand again, before letting go of Emma's hand as well and turning to glare at the hapless moron behind her, so keen to understand where it all went wrong that he doesn't seem to realize that he's asking all the wrong questions at exactly the wrong time.  
   
"I mean--is that normal, between people who have magic?" David queries, looking between them.  
   
Even now, even as hurt as he is--and perhaps as angry, it's hard to say--he can't help but try to connect. It would be maddening, except that Emma just sighs and says, "What about any of this crap is normal, exactly? We're about to search a immortal fairy tale character's house for a mystical dagger that should be able to kill him."  
   
"No, but, I mean," James says, swallowing and looking at Regina again. "I'm just trying to understand what's going on," he continues, a little more deflated now. "I don't want anyone to get hurt. That's all."  
   
It's a small mercy, presumably down to his utter lack of magical ability, that he hasn't yet pieced together what has happened between them.  
   
Relief courses through Emma so abruptly that Regina can feel it even without touching her; Regina imagines that it's that relief, more than anything, that has Emma saying, "It'll be fine. We cast that spell together, remember? This isn't the first time that we're doing the whole... joined magic thing. It's--it just kind of works for us."  
   
The fact that Emma is addressing him directly is clearly enough for James to capitulate. "Okay. Sorry. I--I know that you know what you're doing. Or, at least, I always thought that you were really capable, before..."  
   
Killian's exaggerated sigh snaps them all out of it, and as the pirate motions for them to get on with it, Regina tries not to laugh at the disgruntled look on James' face. Emma, too, bites her lip for a second, before linking their hands together again and tugging on Regina's arm until they're both facing the house.  
   
"Do your thing," she says, quietly, and after one more second of looking at Emma, inscrutable behind those sunglasses, Regina does.  
   
...  
   
She's been inside of Rumpel's house before, but never has had any eye for his choices in decor; in fact, she's never made it further than the foyer. No matter what he had or hadn't remembered, there had been a tacit understanding that their own spaces, their little empires, were sacrosanct for twenty eight years. That understanding went both ways; Rumpelstiltskin has never seen her or Henry’s bedroom any more than she has stood in his before this very moment.  
   
Her skin prickles when someone joins her, and she only barely manages to suppress a sigh when James immediately stubs his toe against the edge of the neatly-made king-sized bed. To his credit, James only winces and sucks in a hissed breath, before limping over to the nightstand and pulling open the top drawer there.  
   
When it's clear he's not going to talk until they've completed their search of the room, she raises her hand at the wardrobe and motions it open, sifting through the clothes from a few feet away, until it's clear that nothing is hidden in them.  
   
She stops when she realizes James is holding what looks like a copy of the King James and is staring at the wardrobe with his mouth slightly opened.  
   
"Surely you've seen more impressive feats than this," she says, unable to hide her disdain of his gaping.  
   
James closes his mouth abruptly and stares at the bible in his hand, flipping through the pages with it held over the bed, but nothing falls out of them and onto the duvet. It's only once he places the bible back that he mutters, "You're not really in the habit of using pretty, harmless magic around my family."  
   
It's the truth, and after a second Regina shuts the wardrobe doors again without moving, before pocketing her hands as James turns to look at her. "If it makes you feel better, I promised my son I wouldn't use... what he calls bad magic. It's a promise I intend to keep."  
   
The way that James blinks at her a few times reminds her so acutely of Emma that she can't really bring herself to be annoyed with his ham-fisted attempt to read her. Then, he simply stares at his own feet for a second and asks, "How are they? Henry and Emma, I mean."  
   
"Henry will be fine. He's remarkably resilient," she says, unable to keep a hint of pride out of her voice. "The last two years would've brought most grown men to tears, but not my son. He's--"  
   
"He lost a family in the last few days," James says, before releasing a small sigh and then adding, "As did Emma."  
   
It takes some effort, but somehow she manages to not flinch at the truth in his words. "It was an illusion. They're both bright enough to know that--"  
   
"Even if it wasn't real _,_ the happiness there was. She loved you. She loved you the way that I love Snow; and God, I can't believe I'm saying this, but you must have loved her as well or it would've never worked," James says. The words are blunt and forceful and after a second he runs his hands over his face and shakes his head. "I've been going over this over and over again in my mind, but Emma said you weren't under the spell and that means we can trust you because you didn't cause us any harm then, when it would've been really easy to do it. But that also means that--"  
   
"Pray tell; what insight have you miraculously gained that is in _any_ way of relevance now that the spell has obviously been broken and we're in a shared enemy’s house on an entirely unrelated quest?" she cuts him off, as coolly as she can.  
   
James exhales softly and lowers his hands to his side again and, eventually, tilts his head a little. "You know, she fumbled her way through that explanation and apologized for everything she'd done until Snow accused _you_ of causing her to forget about us. That's when she completely lost her temper."  
   
The way the air rushes out of her lungs is inevitable, but there's thankfully a bed between them and he has no idea what her reaction betrays. "Perhaps she's not too keen on being thought of as perfect. It's quite the burden, always having to live up to someone else's notions of what you ought to be capable of... especially when that someone else hardly knows you."  
   
It's enough. Whatever glimmer of awareness James is approaching, it shifts into defensiveness and anger. "We only want her to be happy and safe. It's all we've ever wanted, and everything we've ever done, including putting her in a tree because you would have killed her had we not done it--"  
   
"Any luck?" Killian asks, peering around the doorway, cradling what looks like a locked chest of some kind in his arms; the kind of chest that may have littered his pirate ship in centuries past, in fact.  
   
James' cheeks puff for another second, but then he mutters, "No, there's nothing mysterious here" and heads towards the door, brushing roughly past Killian on his way out.  
   
Killian mimes whistling and steps into the room fully. "I see that the in-laws will need some time to adjust to--"  
   
"Don't. They have no idea; and we'll keep it that way," Regina says, sharply enough for Killian's eyebrows to slant but for him to quickly nod. "What do you have there?"  
   
"A peculiar find. A locked treasure chest in a children's room. A seemingly unused and sparsely decorated children's room, mind. For a boy roughly the age of.... well, a few years older than your Henry, but not many," Killian says, before rapping his fingers against the side of a chest. "I suspect it's sealed by a combination of magic and mechanism; and while I'm fairly adept at gathering treasure, I can't say that I'm much for lockpicking or anything else that doesn't just require fast hands and the occasional stabbing. I was hoping--"  
   
"The magic, I can deal with--but you'll want to have Emma examine the lock," Regina says, before floating the box out of his hands and letting it levitate in front of her. It positively hums with an old enchantment, which could mean anything, but it's the first sign of success they've had after going through three innocuous rooms.  
   
"The Sheriff? _"_ Killian asks, before chuckling softly. "I don't know why I'm surprised. I guess we all have more than one side to us at this point, hm?"  
   
It's enough to make her roll her eyes again, but when he slings his arm around her shoulder as she levitates the chest down the stairs--to where James is attempting a hesitant, casual conversation about the _weather,_ of all things, with Emma--she still feels oddly settled; as if it's the little reminders of the life she lived before, rather than the unknown she's currently facing, that will get her through this day and then the next.  
   
...  
   
The contraption on Emma's keychain that dismantles into a variety of little pins is a mystery to her, but the look of concentration on Emma's face as she takes two parts of it in her left and right hand and bends over the lock, listening intently as the pins slide in, is familiar; it's the same look that Emma sports when she's trying to help Henry with his math homework, and it's shockingly akin to the look that Emma sports when particularly focused on bringing her wife to orgasm.  
   
That thought has Regina clearing her throat and looking away from the proceedings, with a quiet, "Providing the dagger is here, I expect we'll be surrendering it to you, James?"  
   
James looks up from watching Emma at work as well and nods, distracted. "Abby said to just bring it in. I think she's going to ask those on the council with magical ability to device some sort of containment spell for it, and until then she'll keep it in the safe in your former office with a permanent guard."  
   
"Magical containment," Killian scoffs from where he's sitting on the couch, flexing his new fingers in a way that suggests that he's far from used to them being there yet. "There isn't anything that can magically contain Rumpelstiltskin. There isn't a single magic user he's ever encountered that he didn't manage to wipe the floor with; even Cora feared a direct confrontation. She once told me that she'd had a variety of defenses at her court that would have at best given her time to escape if he'd ever have come looking, but he never did. The time for his revenge hadn't come."  
   
Emma glances over at that, finger stilling around the latch keys. "What were those defenses? Anything we can mimic over here, or make in Storybrooke?"  
   
Killian crosses his legs and stares at the ceiling for a second, his eyes narrowing. "You'll have to bear with me; it was ancient history at that point, but she once told me that her court was composed of magical creatures with a variety of talents. One of them was a portal jumper named the Hatter--"  
   
"Jefferson," Emma exhales, looking over at Regina. "Right?"  
   
She nods, before looking at Killian again. "He lacked his hat by the time he was in her court, however. He would've offered her no exits there. I imagine she had him try to recreate the hat endlessly--"  
   
"Oh, God, like he was doing here," Emma says, leaning back in her chair. "How long would he have been at it? How much time did he spend trying to get it to _work_ before he finally got away?"  
   
There are no answers to that question; James simply looks at Killian again, a lost look washing over his face, and says, "Who else?"  
   
"She had a jester of sorts in her court," Killian says, frowning. "Resolving his riddles granted wishes, and on top of that... I believe she said he had the ability to make parts of his body disappear, as well of those of anyone he happened to be in contact with at the time. A useful feat when faced with fire magic or... well, the rather more contemporary bullet _,_ I suppose. Additionally, she had a gryphon--"  
   
A small sound escapes Emma, and as Killian falls quiet, Emma bends back over the treasure chest and says, "Sorry; I guess even after seeing an ogre I can't really wrap my head around things like that being real in other places."  
   
"They're not common in all parts of our lands; and not all are as common as ogres are. I've never seen a gryphon either, for what it's worth," James says, almost soothingly, before raising his eyebrows at Killian. "Was that all?"  
   
"No--there was also the rabbit. This one she talked of often; we might think of him as the one who got away." Killian smirks briefly and straightens more, folding his hands in his lap. "It vexed her even decades later. He had the ability to manipulate time, which she used to control the kingdom back when he obeyed her--but he tricked her and managed to flee her court. She tried to find him, but he escaped the reach of her magic altogether; she suspects he fled to a world without magic or she would have been able to find him and--"  
   
The treasure chest bounces open with a loud click, and Emma reaches inside of it, immediately lifting out a wrapped package with great care. Before Regina can snap at her to be careful, she's already unwrapping it and is left holding what looks to be a cloth of some kind.  
   
"No dagger," Emma says, unwrapping the fabric as James and Killian crowd the dining table again, but it's Regina she looks at. "Just--drawings and a white scarf of some kind."  
   
"We'll try the pawn store, then," Regina says, as Killian's face falls and he reaches for the drawings and drops them back in the treasure chest with a thinly set mouth, muttering something about _real treasure_ before heading towards the hallway again.  
   
James touches the scarf and glances between them after a second. "Who do you think this belongs to? For him to go through such trouble--"  
   
"His son," Killian says, from the hallway. "Baelfire."  
   
Emma takes the scarf from James and drops it back into the chest, with a dry, "That's one hell of a name--though I guess if your dad's _Rumpelstiltskin..._ "  
   
"He was named by his mother," Killian says, in a tone of voice that Regina can't immediately read, but the look on Killian's face is clear enough. Something sharp echoes inside of her at the realization that no, she truly isn't alone in the life she's lived; she's not alone in knowing losses that destroy whole lives and guide existences for eternities to follow. "He's a good lad, much as his mother was a good woman; a wonderful woman, in fact. Bae once offered his father a chance at a life without magic, a life where they would be together without the Dark One, and what Rumpelstiltskin chose was himself. He will never choose anyone other than himself."  
   
James and Emma exchange a look but otherwise stay silent as Killian shrugs back into a jacket that doesn't befit the modern Storybrooke in the slightest. Regina watches as he flexes the fingers on his left hand a few times and then starts when Emma's chair pushes back loudly on the wooden floor.  
   
"We'll try the store," Emma says, with a modicum more patience than she's had for the task so far; and at the sound of it, Regina feels the barest stirring of hope within herself.  
   
Of course Killian's quest for revenge is nothing like her own had been, but apparently Emma isn't _so_ moral as to be completely without understanding of the notion of revenge in general; isn't so overwhelmingly good that the mere idea of vengeance is enough to rankle her, the way it had rankled her mother and father and so many others in the old world.  
   
James fishes his car keys out of his pocket and gestures for Killian to go out in front of him, and it leaves Emma and Regina alone in the house of a man who so very casually signed them both up for horrible lives--but truly, all Regina has eyes for is Emma, who glances back at the scarf in the box and then sighs softly.  
   
"God. All of it, because of his son," she says, glancing up at Regina with haunted eyes. "Would you have gone as far as he did to get Henry back? I mean--setting up that curse, making sure someone would be able and willing to cast it, and making sure that the savior would--that I'd be alone until I broke it?"  
   
That small glimmer of hope wavers as Regina squares her shoulders and closes her eyes. "Well. I won't pretend that... I don't understand why he did what he did. I would have torn the very fabric of reality apart if it meant keeping Henry, once."  
   
"You say that," Emma says, after a second, and it forces her eyes back open. "But when you realized that he really wasn't doing well with you, you let him go."  
   
Regina's heart plainly stops before starting again. "That's... is that what Henry says happened, when you were gone? Or--"  
   
Emma smiles faintly and closes the treasure chest again. "I'm not going to pretend that you haven't done some seriously horrible shit, Regina, but if Henry ever asked you to choose between your magic and him, I know where you'd land. You're not Rumpel _._ Even at your very worst, you could never be _him_." She pauses, and then looks at Regina more soberly; more as someone fighting the same fight than someone having a conversation this fragile and personal. "And don't think you're alone in being willing to kill for our kid. I really hope I never have to... again, I guess, but there isn't a doubt in my mind that I would. And I'm not just saying that because it's apparently normal where we're all from."  
   
Regina takes a step in closer to where Emma is standing and watches as she zips her leather jacket back up, before tugging the sunglasses out from the V of her t-shirt. "What are you saying?"  
   
"Just that... this stuff isn't as clear-cut as some people want it to be," Emma says, before sliding the sunglasses back on with a slightly trembling hand and exhaling softly. "I'm pretty sure we'd all kill for the right reasons. Some people are just lucky enough to never come across those."  
   
"Providing we find this dagger, we may never come across them again," Regina says, and after a second, the corner of Emma's mouth quirks up just a bit.  
   
"Yeah. We can hope, huh?" she says, in a tone of voice that suggests that it won't be easy, but hope is less inaccessible to her now than it has been for a very long time.  
   
It's a familiar feeling, and as she follows Emma out of a house that she'll gladly never return to, Regina feels it strengthen inside of herself a little more.


	10. Chapter 10

Main Street is not as deserted as it was the day before; townspeople are heading to the various shops, open as normal, and the number of cars parked outside of the town hall suggest that it will not be long now before a horn sounds for what will hopefully be the final time.  
   
As James parks, the door to the diner bursts open and Red steps outside, shrugging into a jacket with hurried movements and hooking a basket around her arm before heading off in the direction of the nearest grocery store. Regina covertly watches as Killian stiffens, but can't stop himself from subtly craning his neck just to watch her disappear into the distance, her basket swinging as it does in this world's version of the fairy tale but otherwise perfectly like the human girl he spent years of his liffe with. Only when Emma says, "Right--I'm guessing that there'll be more magical wards?" does he avert his eyes.  
   
As he unbuckles his seatbelt, he says, "Probably not anything you and Regina can't handle, darling."  
   
James' mouth twists at the word _darling,_ but after an eye-roll from Emma he fishes the keys out of the ignition and silently opens the door. A matter of seconds later, they're back in the same formation they'd been in outside of the Gold residence, but it's with more of an audience this time--as if the mere sight of the patrol car alerted the passers-by to something unusual going on.  
   
The muttering is indistinct but enough for Emma's shoulders to tighten and for the hand that grips Regina's in preparation of the magic to feel a little clammy and cramped. She sends a small burst of relaxation through their linked hands, and hears Emma suck in air through her teeth before she returns to focusing on the front entrance to the shop. Within moments, as she starts probing the thrumming, dark wards that shimmer in front of them, the waves of white rushing into her arm dismiss the headache at her frontal lobe before it even fully develops and the pawn's shop door gently swings open.  
   
"How easy was that?" Killian asks, taking two steps towards the door and lifting off and twirling the black and white _closed_ sign hanging on the inside of it. "Too easy, would you say, or might he be hiding something here?"  
   
"There could be more magic inside; traps, wards, glamors," Regina says, feeling Emma's hand tremble in her own before Emma pulls away and, with another quick glance at the small crowd they've drawn, heads into the shop. "Emma--no. Let me go in first. We don't know--"  
   
Emma gets halted by her father, who blocks her way until Regina has taken a few steps into the store and closes her eyes just to feel their new surroundings. When the low hum of magic hits her, it's abrupt; the amount of dormant charge within the store makes her stumble backwards, until she reaches Killian's side and he steadies her.  
   
It's as if every single object has a clearly tangible magical footprint of sorts; as if nothing Rumpel brought back from the other land, by design of the curse, is without purpose. Much as Henry's book had managed to do, every for-sale here could have potentially tripped the end of the curse; which one would actually do it would've been anyone's guess, and not Rumpel's, who wouldn't have known to be worried about it by the time they'd arrived in Storybrooke.  
   
This entire room spells out her various potential undoings, and that realization is enough to make her shiver despite the fact that it isn't remotely cold.  
   
"Any traps?" Killian asks, forcing her eyes open as she focuses on him. To his credit, he looks concerned about _her_ , rather than the dagger, as if seeing Ruby has pulled him back to the present in a way that he's not even particularly aware of.  
   
She shakes her head. "Not that I can see, but before you try the back, allow me to scan it, please."  
   
"There are a _lot_ of strange things here. Any idea what we're specifically looking for--" James starts, closing the front door behind him as Emma squeezes by him and slips off her sunglasses.  
   
A harried, annoyed look lingers on Emma's face for a long moment, but she shakes it off and heads to a bookcase at the back of the shop. "A dagger, remember?"  
   
"That, or anything that might point us to where it is. I highly doubt we'll simply find the dagger here," Regina says, looking at Killian, who nods. "Collect all books, maps, any sort of slab with unusual markings. We're at best looking for clues, so anything that you think might lead to us finding the dagger's location should be kept put aside at this point."  
   
"Okay," James says, looking at her for another second with an expression she can't read at all before turning towards the cases displaying the fine jewelry.  Killian walks up to the sales counter, one measured step at a time, and with one final glance towards Emma, who is starting to look more like herself now that they're back to their current task, Regina heads towards the very back of the room and pulls aside the curtain that separates the storefront from Rumpelstiltskin's inner sanctum.  
   
...  
   
James exits the store with a final armful of books and artefacts for them to examine as Emma leans against the counter and covers her mouth with a hand, only to drop it again with a sigh. "We're never going to find that dagger, are we. I mean, this is going to take--"  
   
Killian glances up from a display case full of nautical navigation equipment--none of it of interest for their purposes--and exchanges a look with Regina. "Forgive me for not finding a stack of objects to root through as intimidating as an infinite number of worlds with finite means to travel between them."  
   
It earns him a small scoff from Emma, who pushes off the case and heads for the door as well. "Whatever. I'm going to ask David if he can get us some food from the diner. I figure there's at least two of us Ruby doesn't want to see right now--"  
   
"Oh, I'm sure now that she remembers what all the Evil Queen has done, she won't want to see me any more than her unwanted boyfriend or the woman who wished her into that relationship," Regina says, softly enough for it to not be as punishing a reminder of what Killian may never regain in this world as it could be; softly enough to make it clear that he's definitely not alone in having to wait and see what comes next, even.  
   
At the door, Emma looks at her for a long moment, not saying anything, and then lowers her eyes and says, "Chicken salad, Regina? Or is there something else you normally...."  
   
The most she can manage is a tight smile in return. "No. You know my standard order, as do Eugenia and Red. They've known it for about thirty years, in fact."  
   
Emma hisses in a breath through her teeth and turns towards Killian, still examining the display case. "What about you?"  
   
"Whatever you're having will be fine; I'm assuming it's a cheeseburger and fries," Killian says, before glancing up at Emma and adding an only mildly sarcastic, "Thank you, Savior."  
   
Emma glares at him briefly, but as they look at each other, that glare recedes into a tired, knowing smile. "It's just a goddamned burger, Hook."  
   
She pushes out the door a second later and Killian turns to Regina with what manages to be an almost sympathetic smile of his own. "I can't decide if you're lucky for having her near you, or particularly cursed for having her so near and yet..."  
   
"I'm sure Kat has Red's phone number, if you'd like to make an overture," Regina says, glancing around the store one last time when an unbidden wave of melancholy hits her "It's hard not to wonder how different my life would've been if I'd just set fire to this place when we first arrived here. He wouldn't have been able to stop me; not unless he'd said please, but presumably any such inclination would've followed the arson."  
   
"I lost patience with _what ifs_ a long time ago, as I'm sure you did too," Killian says, heading towards the store's window display and glancing out at the cruiser. "There is simply no point to them. They won't bring lost loved ones back, nor will they stop half the town from looking at us and seeing only villains."  
   
Regina moves to stand next to him and watches as James trundles off towards the diner and Emma settles into the passenger seat of the cruiser again, looking as unsettled at being a passenger in it as she once did having to drive it. "How much do you know about Red Riding Hood's story?"  
   
"What it said in the book. Ate her boyfriend, primarily because her grandmother attempted to protect her from the truth. Killed her mother--"  
   
" _Killed_ is an overstatement," Regina says, fighting a sigh. "Even the ever-pious Snow White forgave her for it, which says it all. It was an accident or self-defense at worst."  
   
"What's your point, darling?" he asks, but quietly enough to sound like a man who has something to gain here; not one who has lost everything already.  
   
"My point," Regina says, as Emma starts fiddling with the car radio until some angry, distracting rock is probably shutting out all auditory reminders of the outside world, "is that she isn't the type to dismiss anyone for their past. But I highly doubt that she knows it's mutual; denial is how one deals with unpleasant memories in the land of the good, insofar as I've been able to tell."  
   
"What is there to _deny?_ She suffers a curse that she had no ability to control either time she took a life," Killian says, sharply enough to then look surprised by his own tone. "Compared to you and I, she's virtually innocent as a child."  
   
"Perhaps tell her that, when you make that phone call," Regina says, punctuating the words with a sweet-as-it-gets smile.  
   
As Killian's cheeks redden without warning, she chuckles softly and pats his shoulder in passing.  
   
"I liked you better when you--oh, what am I saying? You've always been a bitch, even when that spell mostly retracted your claws," he tells her, and she laughs again before opening the store's front door.  
   
"It produced happy endings, dear; not complete personality changes."  
   
Even as the words leave her mouth, though, she's reminded of a wife that she consciously remodeled into a woman she'd once loathed but had somehow missed in ways that she still cannot quite account for, and she realizes it's only half the story.  
   
It may not have been the spell that had changed them, ultimately, but God knows they are not who they were a year ago by any measure of the imagination.  
   
...  
   
That afternoon, Henry finds her in her study, looking over the first of many of Rumpel's well-disguised books of ancient but _real_ history. He'd stocked them all in the _fiction_ section, of course, with enough transformative magic to make most of them look like innocuous novels; a feat that she grudgingly admires, however much she wishes she didn't.  
   
There is simply no telling what will be relevant for their current quest, meaning that _everything_ has to be read, and closely at that. She's spent the last hour flipping through a factual account of what Ursula had done to the open seas; one look at Emma after a prolonged conversation with her father when they'd been dropped back off at the mansion had been enough to suggest that today, at least, Emma would not be in the right state of mind to actually focus on their goal.  
   
An unexpected idea forms without warning as her son tentatively approaches her, looking as if she might snap at him to get out. If she's honest, it wouldn't be the first time; her office had been mostly off-limits to him, back when she'd had secrets that were necessary to keep for his safety as much as her own. She lowers the book to her lap with a plain, "How was school today, Henry?", which is enough to get him to drop his backpack to the floor next to one of the couches and move towards her desk with less trepidation.  
   
"Boring. I mean, nobody wants to do math or English--everyone just wants to talk about the spell but Grandma stopped by and told us all that our parents would be talking to us about it and school was just going to be school." He sits down in one of the chairs in front of her desk and looks at her with a small frown. "Which is kind of weird, because she's not the principal in this version of Storybrooke--but we still just learned more about fractions today and started reading Romeo and Juliet."  
   
The book in her lap is unlikely to hold any of the clues Emma will be desperate to find, but it's a gruesome read that will appeal to the boy who always preferred _A Nightmare Before Christmas_ to any other traditional children's movies, and after a second she lifts it and shows it to him. "Want to help me do some research? After you do your homework, obviously--"  
   
"I don't have any," Henry says, before looking at her in a way that's so hopeful that it's a little hurtful. "You really want me to--read about fairy tale stuff? About where you guys are all from?"  
   
She holds the book out for him and nods as he folds his fingers around the spine, but when he continues to look at her, she sighs and looks back at him openly. "Nothing is as it was before, Henry. I know this isn't what you want to hear, but back when the curse was intact, telling you about it would have done nothing but... confuse you. It would have _hurt_ you. I might not have been a perfect mother, not by any measure of the imagination, but--"  
   
"Everything happened the way that Rumpelstiltskin planned it," he cuts her off, and then offers her a small crooked smile that's so many degrees of Emma that it nearly cracks her heart in half. "Even if you'd wanted to become better before, you wouldn't have been able to. That's how Rumpelstiltskin made the curse, isn't it? I mean, that's what Emma said, and she wouldn't lie to me about something like that. And when the curse first broke I was pretty mad but I know a lot more now, and... you weren't okay, but you're totally different now."  
   
Her lungs protest violently as she tries to breathe, and in the end the way her eyes well up is inevitable. "You never should have had to understand anything of the sort. I'm so sorry--"  
   
"I know, Mom," he says, and shuffles his chair in closer, until he can put the book on the edge of the desk across from her and lean over it if he sits on his knees. "So what are we looking for?"  
   
...  
   
After dinner, Emma lingers around the living room for a few seconds under the auspices of checking her jacket pockets for something, but when Regina says, "Would you like a drink?" she gives up the pretense and heads towards the sofa, settling into her usual corner and reaching for the blanket that Regina dug out of the linen closet upstairs, just in case.  
   
The glass of scotch is taken from her with a soft thanks, and Regina heads towards the chair by the fireplace—another one of Rumpelstiltskin’s various historical tomes in her free hand—before adding, "You shouldn't hesitate to simply do what you want to in the house. I realize that not much is the same, but--"  
   
"Earlier, my... David spent ten minutes assuring me that if I was struggling with memories of having slept with someone that I'm quote, unquote, completely uninterested in in reality, it would get easier and I'd eventually learn to just think of it as a different life," Emma says. Her eyes shift to Regina sharply, and then she knocks back the entire drink one go before letting the empty glass sink rest loosely on her jean-clad thigh. "I didn't know if I wanted to cry or laugh, honestly. I mean, it's weird enough to think of him and Kathryn doing it now that ... he's my _father_ even if he doesn't feel that way, but I know he's trying and it's not his fault that this doesn't make any sense..."  
   
The sentence trails off into nothing, and Emma picks at the hem of her sweater with her spare hand before just sighing deeply and wrapping herself more firmly in the blanket.  
   
"I really wish I could talk to someone about any of this but I can't, because it's you," she adds, in a softer voice. "I mean, no one I know is going to buy it, no matter how much they're otherwise completely sold on true love. They're just going to say it's a mistake and I have to be wrong or you tricked me into it or whatever, when really, I did this to you _._ Right? It's pretty much all my fault that we are where we are--"  
   
"Emma," Regina cuts her off, as gently as she can, and watches as the crow's feet by Emma's eyes crinkle before she looks back over.  
   
"I know we can't undo it, but the idea that you're to blame for any of this is--"  
   
Regina takes a deep breath and, more forcefully than she intends to, but it's a truth that simply won't stay inside any longer, says, "There is no one to blame for it. It was always going to happen."  
   
Emma's expression freezes almost comically for a second, but as she recovers, she manages a bitter scoff in response. "Of course it was. How could I forget? Ending up in prison pregnant wasn't enough destiny for me; no, of course I'm meant to be in love with a woman who played a huge part in me growing up without parents and who my parents hate in a way that they'll never get over and who also hates my parents because--let's face it, my life was so fucking simple before, it was only a matter of time before a minor complication announced itself--"  
   
"I know it's not what you want to hear, but that doesn't mean that it isn't..." After a moment, Regina glances out the window at her apple tree, unable to look at Emma's grimace any longer; not right now, not when talking of something sacred to her and terrifying to Emma. "I never thought I'd feel this again. I would not give it up for anything. It has given meaning to--forty horrible years in my life. Even when you leave town, even if you decide that the complications that come with us being together are more than you can or want to handle, and even if you can never forget what has brought me to where I am now... there is love in my life again, and there will be for as long as we are both alive." Even in saying it, her heart brightens beautifully, and at the feeling she looks back at Emma and gives in to the gentle smile that wants to be shared. "Even if it's not what either of us would have chosen if these things were left to choice, it is _everything_."  
   
Emma stares back at her, eyes shimmering with something unnamed, and swallows thickly after a few seconds. "It's literally forever."  
   
"Yes."  
   
"So even when I get the hell out of Storybrooke, I will feel the way I do now every time I think about you. Every time... I come by to get Henry. Hell, even if I'm not actively thinking about you, that feeling will be there with me. Always."  
   
The temptation to dwell on what it felt like to _not_ feel it is there, but easy enough to suppress given how completely it's back, now. "Yes."  
   
"And being with other people will feel--"  
   
"Empty," Regina admits, before releasing a soft laugh. "It'll--oh, Emma. The only reason I ever was with others had nothing to do with desire at all. It secured my rule, and I persisted with it out of ... well, out of an utter lack of understanding."  
   
The frown on Emma's forehead is acute. "Understanding? Like--you didn't know that it wouldn't be the same? But surely the first time you did sleep with someone other than Daniel--"  
   
"I had nothing to compare it _to_. I didn't know how it could be. Daniel and I never--"  
   
"Oh my God," Emma says, sounding so horrified that it's not even really a surprise when Regina hears the blanket rustle and can feel, more than see, Emma move in closer. When Emma sits on the edge of the coffee table and reaches for her knee, the pulse of regret that hits her is acute enough for her to gasp softly. "I had no idea. I thought--Jesus, I don't know what I thought. I obviously didn't think about this very hard at all and I don't know that I could've controlled it any better but I wanted to give you back--the happiness you'd had with him before. I thought that you'd... that he'd died but that you'd had--"  
  
The magic rippling up her thigh is so full of grief--for a future lost years ago, mourned by absolutely no one but herself to date--that Regina feels her own heart stutter in response, at least until the potency of Emma's feelings fades a little and it's only a look of uncensored apology that lingers on her face.  
   
"There was no reason for you to know the truth. His history isn't documented in Henry's book, at which point you would've been exposed only to Snow White's version of the tale, and whole novels could be filled with what your mother doesn't know about my adolescence. Her part in all of this is simply that she wanted a mother more than she wanted me to have happiness, and... the rest of it is as the book states."  
   
The hand gripping her knee tightens briefly, but not with censure. "She was a child, Regina."  
   
Regina huffs softly and looks at Emma, who stares back unblinkingly, as if daring her to concede this--as if this idea hasn't ever crossed her mind before. "And having raised one, I am deeply familiar with what children are and aren't capable of understanding by the time they are thirteen. After all, Henry isn't yet, but he knows what a secret is. He has kept enough of them from me since your arrival in Storybrooke for that much to be clear."  
   
"Yeah, sure, but how exactly was she supposed to know what the consequences of not keeping the secret would be? How would anyone with normal parents have guessed that your mother--" Emma's mouth closes abruptly and she pales spectacularly, as if even the merest mention of Cora is enough to make her relive her own part in casting their spell, but after a second she sucks in a breath and looks at Regina almost pleadingly. "If this thing between us is _so_ important, _so_ powerful, can't it maybe also be enough for you to let this go?"  
   
A strand of Emma's hair hangs in her eye, and after a second, Regina reaches for it and brushes it aside, letting her fingertips just graze by Emma's temple in the process--and it soothes something that has slumbered almost unspoken for the last year, burning brighter than before. "I have let it go, Emma, but our history cannot simply be wished out of existence in a world without curses. That said, if this is truly something that matters to you, I'm sure we will both attempt civility when in each other's presence, which I doubt we'll be very often given that you don't plan on staying in Storybrooke at all."  
   
Emma bites her lip briefly as her fingers retreat to her own lap again. "You've got higher hopes than I do. If she's this pissed at me for casting that spell, I can't even imagine how she feels about you, and--"  
   
"If it's a choice between losing you or tolerating me, there isn't a question in my mind that she'll come around. It's simply what a mother would do in that situation."  
   
They sit silently for a few seconds, Emma's fingertips still gently pressing into her knee, and then Emma shakes her head. "I can't even imagine being with someone who isn't you. Don't get me wrong, I have been, obviously, but thinking about it now--" Her mouth twists in a way that's ugly and then she laughs softly. "Nunhood or you. God, whoever's running our lives has one hell of a sense of humor, huh?"  
   
"I've thought so for a long time," Regina says, covering Emma's hand with her own. "But... and don't get me wrong, I accept that this will only be a minor comfort, but... I think that destiny is almost done with us, at long last. When you consider that the starting point for both of us was Rumpelstiltskin, the search for his dagger suggests to me that we're nearing an end point of some kind as well."  
   
Emma nods, and with another sigh gets to her feet again. "Yeah, I've had that thought. It's kind of a relief, I guess, except for the part where any good end to a story ends with this huge battle--and I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to believe that we'll come out on top against an immortal supervillain. Those are some spectacularly crappy odds, even if if I am made of true love magic and you're really powerful and on my side, now."  
   
"Your family has always had a way of defying the odds," Regina says, unable to fully suppress a hint of bitterness about the sentiment.  
   
After a second Emma just rolls her eyes and fishes her glass back off the table. "You sound like Henry; what's next, promising me that good always wins?"  
   
Regina raises an eyebrow. "Well, in my experience--"  
   
"Yeah, let's not," Emma mutters, before pouring two glasses of scotch at the bar and walking them over, handing one to Regina before taking a sip from her own. "The only way I can deal with any of this is by taking it one day at a time, so--I guess we'll keep looking for that dagger, and if we're still alive by the time we've found it, I'm going to take that as a victory."  
   
The _we_ is so automatic that Regina smiles reflexively, and offers her glass for a toast. "I think we all would at this point."  
   
"Right. Well, I'm done moping about how much having an overbearing father sucks for now, so just tell me what you want me to look into, and we'll take it from there." After taking another sip, Emma glances back towards the mini bar. "You think Fred would like an apple cider? I know he's technically working, but I can't really imagine him taking this seriously--"  
   
"He's not," Regina says, having offered him dinner an hour earlier and being presented with a sheepish grin and a Tupperware of leftovers that she'd heated up for him. "And he'll appreciate the offer, at least."  
   
Emma nods and leaves her own glass on the table, already halfway around it when she stops, turns around and walks back, reaching for a coaster and planting the tumbler on it and looking at Regina with a vaguely sheepish smile. "Sorry. Old and new habits are sort of--"  
   
"Of all the things for you to worry about right now, this isn't one," Regina says, ignoring the way that the look on Emma's face makes her heart swell the best she can, but the longer Emma looks at her, the stronger the impulse to just reach for her grows.  
   
After a few more seconds of teetering on the edge of doing something Emma truly isn't ready for, she produces a look that would've been worthy of the woman she'd been in a different life and waves Emma off. "Go; be whatever approximation of a good hostess you can manage, dear."  
   
She sighs in relief when Emma rolls her eyes and then heads for the front door, because Emma remembering _coasters_ isn't a good enough reason to ignore Emma's need for time to adjust to the reality of their love in this world and to simply kiss her so deeply that their combined magic would probably cause a vortex to open up in the middle of the foyer.  

With a few deep breaths, her heart slows down, until it comes crashing to a halt when her mind whispers that an actual good enough reason may never come; being with Emma may simply never be an option for her again, love or no love. 

Even at the idea, abrupt and fleeting as it is, her magic twists harshly, making her fingers curl into her own thighs with how violently it burns through her. True as it might be that Emma's love will be with her no matter if Emma is, the idea of never truly having her again is ... no, it is one that she will not entertain.   
  
There is simply no reason to when Emma is still in the house, still talking to her, still touching her without warning and still trusting her in a way that she's not sure she can trust herself; no reason to when all signs suggest that her son’s irrational belief in happy endings might not be a childish delusion after all, and true love might actually conquer all, this time.


	11. Chapter 11

Over the next few days, a mostly silent, mostly spontaneous reconfiguration of their family life takes place, punctuated by research that all three of them are eager to engage with, albeit for wholly different reasons.

After a quiet breakfast, not punctuated by any singing or music as it once would have been, Emma disappears into the back yard with books that transform fairy tales she knew as a child in this world in a way that seems to be in equal measure intriguing and baffling to her. Within the next hour, when either Fred or James give him a precautionary restrained ride to the house, Killian spreads out Rumpel's maps on the kitchen island, bending over them until his neck and shoulders start to ache and he invariably comes to find her in the study to complain about the plethora of garbage they have to weed through for a few moments.  
   
In the afternoon, Henry rushes home and joins in the work with a level of glee that has her looking at Emma with barely repressed amusement herself.  He spends the hours before dinner moving between all three of them, as if reluctant to favor either of his mothers and unwilling to simply ignore a man who, in some parts of his mind, he's known his entire life as well.  It’s a level of considerateness he wouldn’t have exhibited before the spell, but it’s enough to settle something very restless inside of Regina’s chest--there since the day she adopted him, this pressing certainty that one day he wouldn’t be hers anymore, simply because whatever happy endings existed in this world, they certainly weren’t for her--as well.  Even in having two other choices, he doesn’t exclude her; it’s almost inconceivable, given what the last few years have been like, but it’s definitely real, evidenced by his endless questions about what life was like “over there” and the way he soaks up her answers without a single hint of mistrust.

On the second day, it occurs to Regina that whatever their life currently _is_ , it cannot stay that way, and what will happen to either Killian or Emma at that point is as uncharted as those ripped-out pages at the end of Henry’s precious book are.  As she watches her son curl up on one of the couches in her office and frown intently at the gory account of the Ogre Wars he’s reading, it hits her that for once, she doesn’t have to worry about losing him, but rather it’s Henry who will be suffering the losses; and tight as it makes her chest feel to even consider this unwanted future, it nonetheless makes her kiss the top of his head before gently suggesting that Emma might need his help, given that she’s not nearly as well-versed in fairy tale lore as he is.  
   
Temporary or not, a routine is a routine, and it is something they all desperately need now and something Regina is not willing to sacrifice for the sake of the feelings of _others_. Consequently, when--on the fifth day after their initial search--James offers to help them in their research, the look on her face is enough to discourage him from pressing the issue. Instead, he looks out the window in her study with an expression loaded with misery at the notion that this life, somehow, simply isn’t cutting it for Emma, before sighing and wishing her grudging good luck with what he’d called “all the reading and … whatever” and heading off again.  It’s a misery she unwillingly understands, but one she’ll spare Emma from at all costs right now, and so it is that a full week passes in which they can both pretend that their whole world is just _them_ , even now.  
   
In the evenings, they commit to spending what Emma has started calling _normal time_ with Henry, in a conscious effort to tie him to this world rather than letting him disappear altogether in a world of fairy tales. They've not needed to discuss the fact that no matter what else happens, they will both do absolutely anything in their power to ensure that Henry will live out his days here, in this flawed land full of opportunity, rather than in the far more limited lands she and Emma hail from.  
   
On the eighth night, Emma watches _A New Hope_ with him as Regina spends an hour on the phone talking to Abigail, who is growing increasingly desperate for reassurances that her strategies for peace aren't completely misguided. They aren't, of course, but there's something inherently pleasing that no matter what else the town thinks of her, some of its inhabitants are willing to concede that for twenty eight years, she did a decent enough job of running Storybrooke for her opinion to not be fully without merit.  
   
As Henry swings by the study to hug her goodnight, before being ushered up the stairs by a drowsy-looking Emma, Abigail says, "George and I have decided that we're going to have to redraft the municipal code and establish our own criminal law, given that we're going to be dealing with less ... well, whatever it is that plagues the average small coastal Earth town, and more with Jafar accidentally setting his neighbor's herb garden on fire."  
   
"Calling it an accident is rather optimistic, if my last few encounters with the man are anything to go by," Regina says, listening to the patter of feet overhead and leaning back in her chair. The days are long and have been largely unproductive, which is resulting in nervous energy building in Emma more with every passing minute of being in Storybrooke and not at all being abated by the fact that they are trying to _help_ Storybrooke.  
   
True love is a peculiar enough power for Emma's current unhappiness to utterly displace her own future devastation at what it is that will bring Emma peace right now, and that has meant little sleep for both of them of late.  
   
"Well, yeah, but that was the wrong example to use anyway; I mean, what exactly do you equate turning someone into a slug to when it comes to this world's laws? It's not quite murder, but it's on par--but then it can be undone, at which point we're just... I don't know," Abigail says, before letting go of a soft sigh. "The council meetings are tense enough without the King and I coming up with proposals that paint all magic in a dark light, but I'm sure you understand that as two people who can't use it--"  
   
"It's threatening," Regina says, closing her eyes to automatic visions of her mother and why, to this very day, nothing appeals to her less than being in any way restrained.  
   
"Yeah, to say the least.  This is speculative, but I truly think that in some ways the non-magical town members would have had an easier time with Emma blowing up city hall to stop a war and killing a dozen people than what you two actually _did_ , however many casualties it avoided, and I'm not sure what we can do to mitigate that fear."  
   
"A set of legal rules that will make it unattractive to do so again will--well. If enforcement is appropriate, it will be what makes the difference, I imagine."  
   
"Yeah, there isn't much point in magical laws when the employees of the Sheriff’s Department are stuck asking people nicely to abide by the rules and hoping not to get turned into a slug when their requests are ignored. Guns and swords are all good and well, but they're not overly effective against--well. I don't have to inform you of what magic is capable of."  
   
"No, you do not," Regina concedes, because as ever, Abigail manages to raise the past in such a way that makes it clear that it's definitely the past; it's a gift of friendship that makes her feel off-kilter and strangely relieved in equal measure. "The only way to effectively fight magic is with magic, obviously. Whoever is Sheriff will need to be as magically capable as..." She trails off when she hears the tapping of a pencil on the other side of the line as well as Emma's distant laughter upstairs, and then laughs softly herself. "Ah. I see where this is going."  
   
"We considered asking Blue or one of her underlings, but the need for fairy dust makes the fairies anything but a long-term solution. Their powers need to be spared for extreme situations; Nova and Blue have admitted that casting the anti-magical wards on the town hall has virtually wiped their supply. At that rate, daily law enforcement will need to fall to someone else."  
   
"You're surely not asking me," Regina says, when the line stays silent for a few conspicuous second.  The mere idea is so outrageous that it smothers any laughter that is trying to claw its way up her throat. "Not that I don't think I'm capable, but I think you're more likely to find the votes to elect Ursula to the office--"  
   
Abigail lets out a peal of nervous laughter before clearing her throat in a way that's almost apologetic. "Oh, gosh, I'm sorry. No offense meant by that at all, Regina, because I know better than to think you can't change; that you _haven't_ changed--"  
   
"Mmm," Regina cuts her off, before the conversation takes a turn for the maudlin that she simply doesn't have the stomach for. "Well, if not me, then who do you have in mind? I might be forgetting about some magic users but those irritatingly self-righteous fairies aside, I wouldn't call any of the ones that come to mind particularly moral, which surely is the least--"  
   
"Emma," Abigail says, somehow making the word sound like an apology. "I want Emma."  
   
The subject of the conversation pads back down the stairs as Regina tries to come up with a response that isn't "You're not alone in wanting Emma, but unfortunately for both of us, she isn't available", and as she passes the study on her way to the kitchen and holds up a hand in vague greeting, Regina closes her eyes and banishes the wave of emotion that the mere sight of Emma produces these days.  
   
"You know she's planning to leave town after finding this dagger--"  
   
"I'm hoping you might be willing to talk to her. I'll work on George and the council; they'll undoubtedly have some issues with the idea given what happened the last time she used magic, but--frankly, contrasting her use of magic with yours should bring most people on board. She gave us happiness. However much we didn't ask her to, there was nothing malicious about what she did, and eventually that _will_ sink in, even with people like Red, who admittedly ended up in situations they would not have chosen to be in." Abigail shifts, the fabric of what is undoubtedly a very nice dress crinkling audibly, before adding, "Perhaps this is all very good and well for me to say because she gave me a wonderful life with the love of my life, but it goes beyond that and I think I can make that case convincingly. When I see what she's done for you--"  
   
"Oh, spare me," Regina says, rolling her eyes. "I've stopped actively trying to hurt people; it doesn't qualify me for sainthood, dear, and in any event, I'm not sure to what extent we can actually _blame_ the Savior for it."  
   
Abigail sounds like she's smiling when she says, "On that note, I should probably tell you that I had a worried James in my office today, desperately wanting to know if I legitimately thought that you had no bad intentions towards his daughter. It must be a mental block that's stopping him from adding together the pieces because he's not normally _this_ slow to grasp the truth."  
   
"Hmm. Well, opinions on his intelligence widely differ, but given that I may have recently committed to trying to lay off certain members of the community for someone else's sake, I suppose I won't voice my own," Regina says, bone-dry.

Abigail laughs low, bringing forth instant memories of late night drinking at a college they never attended together.  "You know, this may be the thing to actually kill Snow White; I know that's not funny--"  
   
"It is, actually; and yes, the thought had occurred to me," Regina agrees, unable to stop from chuckling in kind, until a reminder of what Snow's demise would do to Emma slithers through her mind. "Anyway, that's hardly a concern right now. You need a Sheriff and ... I can't say I disagree that she's the best candidate you have, but persuading her to stay in town... I don't know, Kat. ... Oh, damn it, I’m sorry, I keep forgetting--"  
   
"It's okay. I still respond to it automatically," Abigail says, words laced with her particular brand of inherent kindness; a kindness that has always made Regina feel awful. "And--all I'm asking is that you try. There is very little point in securing the future of a town without an inherently decent governing system; if that's not what the goal is, I might as well hand George the keys to the city right now and go home. Despotism is always on offer; it's the alternative that's worth fighting for, here."  
   
"I'll ask her, and I mean _ask_. I refuse to make her feel like she has any obligation to take up office if she doesn't want it."  
   
"I know, and I completely respect that," Abigail says, easily enough, before yawning audibly and adding, "I'm going to leave it there for tonight. I'll probably talk to you tomorrow even if there are no further breakthroughs on either of our ends--and maybe Fred and I can just come over with dinner one of these days? Let me know."  
   
"I will. Get some rest," Regina says, hanging up and slowly lowering the phone to her desk, before rubbing briefly at her temples and fighting a yawn of her own. When she looks back up, Emma's in the doorway to her study, looking at her with a mixture of concern and curiosity, and she lets her hands drop back into her lap. "Council business; _boring stuff_ , as you'd call it."  
   
Emma smiles and takes a few steps into the study, looking abruptly like an older copy of her son a few days ago; unlike him, however, she doesn’t need an invitation to get over the reluctance to step into the mayor’s domain.  It’s just a moment, and then she slips her hands into her back pockets and strides all the way to the desk, smoothly sitting down in one of the chairs on front of it. "Anything I need to know about?"  
   
Regina watches her face for a few seconds--as ever, it brims with a desire to _help_ \--and then licks her own lips while considering what the way to phrase this might be. "Yes, actually," she says, hiding a smile as Emma immediately shifts forward, ready for orders. "They're--well, for a variety of reasons that I'm sure you'll be able to imagine, they want the Sheriff to be a magic user from now on."  
   
Emma's eyes glaze over, but only for a second, after which she nods. "That makes sense. I mean, the magic in town isn't going anywhere, is it? At which point whoever's in charge of stopping criminals needs to be as powerful as they are. Who are they..." An odd look passes over her face, and her head tilts in a way that is abruptly very reminiscent of her father. "They asked _you_?"  
   
Regina smiles in a way that's almost, but not quite, disdainful. "Dear, your mother serves on the council. Hell will freeze over before I get nominated--"  
   
"Wait, hang on--is hell a real place?" Emma interjects, looking so eager for a conclusive answer that Regina can't help but give in to the urge to toy with her a little.  
   
She raises her eyebrows. "All stories come from somewhere, don't they?"  
   
When Emma blanches spectacularly, possibly at the prospect of going there given her actions of the last year, Regina chuckles softly, at which point Emma blinks twice and huffily sits back, in a way that is very reminiscent of how a younger Henry used to sulk when told he couldn’t play any more video games on a given day.  
   
"You know, that'd be funny if I had any real way to distinguish between the stuff that's--I don't know, from other worlds, or just actually made up or ..."  
   
"I know; it was simply too easy. And I have no idea if hell is a real place. I've been to exactly three worlds and have never had any interest in others. My only point is that I'm more likely to get a thank you note from the dwarves for ending their life-long indentured servitude to the fairies than I am to be nominated for the Sheriff's position as long as Snow White serves on the council."  
   
"So who..." Emma says, a small frown bubbling up between her eyes. She doesn't need to finish the question until the answer hits her, though, at which point her mouth goes vaguely slack. "No. You're not serious."  
   
"Abigail was, and I must say, if I were running the town at this point you'd be my first choice as well."  
   
Emma scoffs and pulls a knee up to her chest, bracing her socked foot on the chair. "Yeah, I'm sure there's not a single hidden motive at play in _you_ wanting me to take up a job in Storybrooke right now."  
   
It's bitchy enough to be an odd fit on Emma, but it's so close to what she would've said in Emma's place that after a second, it's hard not to smile all the same. "That would be a perk. The rationale behind your nomination is that you're an inherently decent person with an exceptional understanding of the world that Storybrooke is now in, and you're magically capable--"  
   
"Of what, randomly going off and shutting down the power on a whole block when Mary Margaret acts like putting me in a tree as a baby was a good thing for me and not just for everyone else?" Emma asks. The self-loathing is potent enough for Regina to feel it, even before Emma adds a bitter, "If' I'm really the best that they can think of, this town is pretty damn screwed, Regina."  
   
"You can be trained in using defensive magic, obviously--"  
   
That earns her a grimace. "Oh my God, I don't want to learn how to use it--look at what having access to all that magic did to you, look at what--"  
   
"Emma, it's not the same. As you say, it's already within you; it has been using you to date, so if you were to stay in Storybrooke, teaching you how to control it would be in your best interest regardless of whether or not you wish to get re-elected--"  
   
"I don’t," Emma says. The words come out steady, but her face contorts as soon as she's said them. "They're wrong, and so are you. I don't have what it takes to be... some sort of justice warrior. I've made so many horrible decisions that I don't even trust my judgment in dealing with my own life, let alone anyone else's, and--"  
   
Regina watches as Emma's teeth sink into her bottom lip, pressing down harshly, and has an abrupt vision of what she must've been like as a little girl, constantly shuffled back and forth from foster family to social services, never quite good enough for adoption and always too difficult to be a passable meal ticket. It has her getting up from her chair and heading over to stand next to Emma's, and she hesitates for only a second before grabbing her shoulder and squeezing tightly.  
   
"You're allowed to say no. You're not failing anyone by doing what you believe to be the best thing for you _and_ the town, Emma. I just wanted you to hear the request because you should know that some of us do truly think there is a place for you in Storybrooke, wholly separately from the destiny that brought you here--"  
   
"During the movie, Henry asked me how we're going to deal with me not living here. He just straight up asked me where I'd be going. I said Boston, because it's the first thing that came to mind, but that's a six hour drive away. I'd do it, every weekend, but--" Emma closes her eyes as a full-body shudder runs through her. "I feel like I'm being torn in half. Staying here... I just can't, but leaving screws everyone else, and--"  
   
"You come first," Regina says, and Emma produces a feeble nod, unconvincing as her bluster has ever been. "No, don't give me that--you do come first.  It's not as if leaving Storybrooke now means you can't ever come back; it means that you're going somewhere where you can piece yourself back together. Staying here now will... well, it's not a perfect analogy, but binding yourself to this town is not practically different from how I was bound to the king. I'm not saying that you'll turn to any of the things I did--but what plagues you now will simply consume you, Emma, and that is the last thing that Henry needs from you."  
   
A hand covers hers, and the peace that always chases a physical connection between them follows immediately. "You're right."  
   
"I'm usually right," Regina drawls, arching an eyebrow; it's enough to make Emma snort softly. "And on a somewhat related tangent, Killian might have found something today. One of the maps doesn't appear to correspond to any of the knowledge he has of the old realm; that could mean anything, but there was a glint of excitement in his eyes, which is enough for me. If I never have to read another insipid natural witch's account of becoming one with the elements in my life--"  
   
Emma turns to her with a smile even as she pulls her hand away; the _thank you_ is implicit in it, and yet another thing that will give Regina something to live for in endless days that will follow Emma's departure from Storybrooke. "If you ask really nicely and maybe offer to give him advanced riding lessons for his next birthday, I'm pretty sure Henry will be willing to trade you for one of the mermaid stories. And I mean, a few of my favorite meals and maybe I'll give up this really gross account of Bluebeard's marriages that I'm reading right now..."  
   
Regina feels her nose crinkle without permission. "I think I'll stick with what I have, thank you."  
   
"Too gruesome even for you?" Emma asks.

It's a flippant question that has a core of genuine query to it, at which point Regina looks at her steadily and then manages a wry smile.  "I won't pretend I haven't taken a lot of life, Emma, but never without a purpose--and the purpose was never enjoyment. There are--well, I'm sure Snow White would disagree with me, but there are degrees of wrongdoing even within the overall heading of evil--"  
  
"Of course there are. I was just--" Emma lowers her eyes and then shakes her head. "The worst you've done is what I've done now, isn't it. It's--functional. It got you from one place to the next."  
   
"If death is what you consider the worst, then, yes."  
   
Emma's eyes darken with warning, but flash back to their normal wavering green-blue almost instantly, and she lets go of a sigh. "Right. The hearts; the controlling of people."  
   
"As their monarch, I would have controlled them anyway. This was simply--" At the look of Emma's face, she stops and feels her jaw tighten. "This world's morals cannot apply to an entirely separate existence. If you truly cannot understand that I controlled everyone in my kingdom regardless of if they were allowed to maintain the illusion of free choice--if you cannot understand that just the same, anyone who opposed King George with a single word was garrotted and decapitated, or that your mother's half-hearted attempt to execute me by a storm of arrows was hardly something she'd invented for me on the spot--"  
   
"No, I know. It's... like reading a history book. One with all kinds of magical crap in it, but a history book all the same. Europe in the Middle Ages, or something," Emma says, getting to her feet somewhat unsteadily. "I know that, but you're not history, and I just can't completely divorce myself from this world's morals simply because they ... you know, they don't work for what you did."  
   
Regina fights the urge to sigh and inclines her head slightly. "And so here we are."  
   
"No," Emma says, her voice firm enough for Regina to actually take that single protest at face value. "What you don't understand... what I don't think _any_ of you really get is that... the thing about the morals of this world is that--they take into account what drives people to do what they do. The law isn't really into just branding people good or evil, because we're all capable of both. And if you'd had a better life--if it wasn't for your mother, or Daniel, or this whole forced marriage thing--"  
   
"It doesn't excuse anything I've done," Regina says, because the way Emma is looking at her means that they both need the reminder.  
  
"No. But it explains how you ended up where you did, and anyone who really can't see that there's more to you than those horrible years ..." Emma's lips purse for a second, and a dark look passes over her face before she speaks again. "You know, when I told Mary Margaret and David about what I'd done, what I'd done to your mother, they both just gasped and immediately started making up excuses for me.  I was trying to do the right thing, so it was fine. As if there's nothing I can ever do that will make me less good, and no matter what you do, you're always going to be evil. It's crazy, and as much as I'm struggling with all the Evil Queen stuff.... I mean, as hard as that is, I just wanted to say that I'm not them. I haven't written you off as just... _like_ that, and I don't want you to write yourself off either."  
   
They stare at each other silently for a few seconds, until Emma's magic starts to simmer in a way that's appreciable even without touching her; at the feeling, Emma takes a step backwards, almost tripping over the desk chair. "Oh, my God--Regina, what's--what am I--"  
   
"Give me your hand," Regina says.  
   
It barely takes Emma a second to extend it. The magic that crashes into Regina as soon as they touch is so wildly beautiful that the moan she releases is involuntary. Her skin tightens and every single erogenous zone she has lights up at once, but when she looks in Emma's eyes, something far more innocent than the attraction they so obviously are both feeling right now swells to the surface of her mind.  
   
"Control it. Think of the most serene you've ever been. A specific moment of peace; whatever it is, focus on it and let it drown out the magic.  Find it within you, and it will allow you to--"  
   
"What's yours? What's your--" Emma asks, her voice liquid and low in a way that Regina feels everywhere.  
   
"Now... I would think of Henry, at six months old, falling asleep in my arms while holding the index finger on my right hand with one of his fists. He just dozed off, utterly at peace and content--wholly unaware of who I was, without any reason to fear me. He trusted me, and he slept," she says, watching as Emma's eyes first spark at her words but then, within moments, start to calm.  
   
"Okay. Okay, I've got it--okay," Emma stutters, as the rush of magic abates and what remains is more bearable and less urgent.  
   
"Yes, you do," Regina says, ignoring the way that pertinent parts of her are throbbing and the way that Emma's entire body looks as tightly wound as it does when she's on the verge of orgasm. "You can do it for yourself, next time. Whatever your moment is, just grasp it until you feel you're in control again."  
   
Emma gives her a shaky nod and a rough, "thanks", before pulling her fingers back and running her hands through her hair. After that, she manages another abruptly shy look over before lowering her eyes altogether. "I'm just--I think I'm going to get some sleep. If you're right and Hook has something, we'll probably be heading out in the next few days, so, better get rest when we can."  
   
It's utter deflection, but not without its merits as a strategy for coping with the remainder of their search, and after a moment Regina just nods. "I'll see you tomorrow."  
   
"Yeah," Emma says, voice still rough and small, before backing out of the room in a way that is more akin to running than it is to walking. It would be almost comical, if not for the fact that Regina's own body just gives out as soon as Emma's footsteps sound on the stairs and she collapses against the front of the desk on shaking knees.  
   
A full week ago, this would have resulted in marathon sex on a scale that defies description, but however wonderful a thing their magic is to share, they will definitely not be sharing it like that now.  
   
...  
   
Faint awkwardness lingers throughout breakfast the next morning.

Henry is picking up on it, but obviously has zero context for it, at which point pinning it on restlessness given the dagger's unknown location is simple enough. If Emma's knife scrapes over the toast a little rougher than usual, he'll chalk it up to her needing to play the part of the rescuer that she never would have cast herself in all over again.  
   
Killian arrives much earlier than he usually does; the clunk of boots in the hallway has her eyebrow curving automatically, but the timing is explained when Killian shuffles in to the kitchen and raises a hand before saying, "The deputy insisted on joining us today."

James appears a second later, and Regina suppresses a smile when it’s clear that his delay was caused by the fact that he also took off his shoes.  It stops being funny when she catches sight of James’ face. He looks like the sight of the domesticity inherent to their morning rituals is giving him an ulcer, at least until he catches sight of Emma stiffening at his expression.  Then, he takes a stilted breath and he reaches for the back of one of the empty chairs.  
   
"Do you mind if I sit down, or--"  
   
"Sure, Gramps," Henry says, shuffling his own chair over to make space for him. "You can also eat whatever you want, if you haven't had breakfast yet."  
   
James relaxes at the invite but doesn't take any food, which is hardly surprising; there's no way for him to be sure that the particular piece of toast he'll be reaching for won't be laced with something that might kill him, obviously.  
   
"Do you guys want cofffee?" Emma asks, and at Killian’s nod and soft, "Thanks, darling", books it towards the other side of the kitchen. As Henry asks about the map and Killian starts explaining why he thinks it's a winner, Regina watches as James looks around the kitchen, as if trying to use it as a means to piece together the life of a daughter he's never had a chance to know.  
   
There's something very acutely sad about the fact that within a minute, said daughter has to stop making the coffee because she has to ask her father how he takes it. Regina knows that her own son could have very easily ended up in a similar position to Emma; one where she was nothing but a distant memory or an utter disappointment, and he grew up without knowing his other mother altogether.  
  
The thought makes her hand tremble as she reaches for her juice, but as Emma walks the coffee over and Henry says, "So it's somewhere in the woods? Like by the Toll Bridge? Because a lot of weird stuff happens there. I mean, that's where you were found after you got out of the hospital after David’s coma, right Gramps?"  
   
"It's where your grandmother and I ... well, it's not _quite_ where we met--thanks, Emma, I really appreciate it--it's not quite where we met, but it's close enough. If I had to say, that's probably where I fell for her, actually. We ... well, it's a long story," James says, trailing off when he realizes what company he's in. His cheeks grow ruddy with embarrassment, and Regina has to fight the urge to roll her eyes, only managing when Emma sits back down and looks at him hesitantly for a few moments.  
   
"It's in the book," she says, and James looks back at her with mild surprise, before tentatively nodding. "But the book's accounts of anything are totally warped. What was it really like? Did she really--well, I mean, the book makes it sound like she was kind of a stubborn idiot and you totally saved her from becoming a lunch snack for some trolls--"  
   
James laughs, cupping his mug with both hands and clearing his throat. "Um, that's--well. It was... more the opposite, if I'm being totally honest. I didn't know anything about... _anything_ back then, but least of all battle, but your … Snow had already been on her own for a while and... she's always been very good at taking care of herself. She’s also great at yelling at me to not be an idiot, but her real strength is survival."  
   
"Did she get like--trained in fighting? Because, no offense, but Fairy Tale Land seems like the kind of place where girls are supposed to grow up to be like, nice wives and mothers, but not really--" Emma says, and it's at the realization that the question is being directed at her that Regina almost drops her juice altogether.  
   
"Trained in--" she repeats, as Killian reaches for a croissant and starts buttering it.  
   
"Yeah--did she have like, a fighting instructor? Or was it all just piano lessons and how to eat at a table full of royals and... I mean, I don't know. Boring princess stuff?"  
   
A look at James lets Regina know that she's not alone in being utterly astonished that Emma is asking _her_ these questions.  Of course, there aren't really any living alternatives beyond Snow herself, obviously, but that doesn't negate that it's a wholly unexpected development.  
  
It's only when she looks at Henry and he's sporting a facial expression that he also wears when Emma tells him that one of his video games is too difficult that she looks back at Emma and says, "I wasn't--I can't speak with certainty of her younger years, but by the time I married her father, she was being prepared for a life of rule. It didn't come with--her husband would have been expected to be a capable fighter, but her own role would have been limited to diplomacy and … I suppose charitable causes, if she’d developed an interest in those."  
   
"So she taught herself how to fight," Emma says, looking between her and James.  
   
"She didn't have much choice," James says, as Regina nods, but it's lacking in the sharpness that would have accompanied it for so long. "She was--out on her own, in a world full of dangers and strangers who might have wished her harm, and ... she learned to get by, to take care of herself."  
   
An odd expression washes over Emma's face, but before Regina can really read it, Emma looks across the table at Killian and says, "Well, while we're on the subject of survival--I guess we better go and get some shovels and start digging up a forest, huh? Unless there's magic that can help us find the dagger out there."  
   
"Ooh, like a locator spell," Henry says, with an altogether far-too-excited expression. "Do you know how to do those, Mom?"  
   
"I know some, but it's hard to say if they would work here; I would imagine the dagger is warded, and most proprietary trace magic requires--well, DNA, to put it in a way that this world would. A lock of his hair, or a fingernail--"  
   
"Ewww," Henry and Emma say in tandem, before both chuckling; when Emma slings an arm around Henry's shoulder, he looks the most settled he has all morning almost immediately.  
   
"I brought some police tape--we can treat the area as a crime scene if you can give us a somewhat specific area to block off," James says to Killian, who just nods, as if this is in fact the same man who'd once accompanied him to trade shows in a different life, and not someone who has considered killing him in this one.  
   
"That will help. It's a bit much to hope that the town simply won't notice what we're doing, at which point--"  
   
"Yeah," James agrees, with another small sip of his coffee and a look over to Henry. "I guess we can pick up some digging gear after we drop you off at school, huh?"  
   
"Aw, man," Henry says, with a pout that's straight from the Emma arsenal, and James ruffles his hair before saying, "Sorry, your highness, but hey--if you ask your mothers nicely, maybe you can come help us out after school?"  
   
"Sure thing, kid," Emma says, casually enough, but her words don’t diminish the sudden rush of second-hand relief Regina felt at James' almost automatic use of the plural.  Emma’s face says nothing, but her magic speaks for itself these days; it’s honest even when Emma would rather it wasn’t.  
   
It might not mean too much, but acknowledging that they both are Henry’s parents is definitely more than James would have ever managed before they'd cast the spell, and as Killian raps his knuckles against the table and says, "Okay then--shall we?", Regina looks across the table and reconsiders a man that she spent most of her adult life wanting to see dead purely for the sake of equivalence.  
   
James isn't Snow, and while it's not the first time she's had the thought, not by a long run, it used to hold a note of dismissal within it; however much she's hated Snow for decades, at least Snow was a worthy opponent, but this man had never felt like more than a trumped-up peasant, significant only _because_ of Snow.  Peasant or not, however, at least James seems to understand what it is that Emma needs right now, and it's at that realization that the resentment she'd already committed to never acting on actually starts to fade a little.

"We shall," she says.


End file.
